Lewes honours Holocaust Memorial Day

Tim Locke, chairman Lewes HMD Group, said: “A group of local residents are marking Holocaust Memorial Day, which commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27 1945.

The Lewes Holocaust Memorial Day Day Group is holding a lantern-lit vigil on Cliffe Bridge in Lewes on Friday, January 27 at 6pm for half an hour or so, with readings and short speeches remembering victims of the Holocaust and other genocides.”

Tim added: “We’ve had tremendous support from the local community in helping ensure that the atrocities of those events are never forgotten and that testimony from descendants of survivors can be heard. Several members of our group, including myself, have parents or grandparents that were persecuted in the dark era of the Third Reich, and one member’s family had to flee from the genocide in Armenia in 1915.”

Other events, all at the Depot cinema, include a reflection of letters written in genocides (on Saturday, January 28) and an evening of words and music at 7pm on Sunday, January 29. All these events are free. The group is entirely voluntary and welcomes new members. Full details are on the group’s website hmd-lewes.org

Tim added: “The Holocaust happened a long time ago but it’s hugely important to remember what happened on such a massive scale – with six million Jews murdered, along with some 200,000 Roma and Sinti (“gypsies”) and other minority groups. The victims were ordinary people who hadn’t done anything wrong. Many of the perpetrators were ordinary people too. It was a seemingly civilised country drawn into a mad spiral of hatred and racial prejudice, orchestrated by propaganda and lies.

“I’ve visited the concentration camp memorial at Dachau, where the words ‘Never Again’ are inscribed in huge letters on a wall. Unfortunately unless the world learns lessons of tolerance and acceptance of refugees from persecution, such atrocities can easily happen again – and have done, for example in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, in Darfur, in Rwanda and in former Yugoslavia.

“Our HMD group in Lewes includes several members whose family members survived or perished in the Holocaust, and we want to communicate the testimony of what happened, and to promote tolerance towards persecuted groups and refugees. Four members of my mum’s family were among those 6 million victims. Fortunately she and her brother escaped to Britain and I’m doing my best to keep her story alive by talking to local groups and recording it in my blog https://ephraimneumeyer.wordpress.com/”