Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

 

I attended a very moving online Holocaust Memorial service broadcast from Leeds Town Hall.  The theme for commemorating this year’s Holocaust Memoria Day is “be the light in the darkness”.

Speakers included Holocaust survivors, many of whom settled in Leeds, who related their experiences and remembering family members who perished. 

“Never again” is the slogan used when we talk about the Holocaust, yet we heard from survivors of genocides which have taken place since then; Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.  We heard about the plight of the Uyghur Muslims in China and the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar which are still happening today.

We must learn from the past to create a better future.  In the words of the author and camp survivor Elie Wiesel who experienced the unimaginable events of the Holocaust, “Whomever listens to a witness becomes one themself”. For me, this means we must not stand by and allow such oppression in our lifetime.

 

Holocaust Memorial Day

On Sunday I accompanied my aunt to the local event to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau  on 27 January 1945.  This year’s theme was Communities Together:   Build a Bridge.

My aunt came to the UK as a young girl on the Kindertransport after Kristallnacht to flee the Nazis.  She and her sister managed to escape but her parents and many other members of her family perished in the death camps.  Members of my family died in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Other camp survivors and their families attended.  The fact that these people have reached a grand old age and have been successful in their fields shows that, despite the holocaust, Hitler failed in his plan.

Unfortunately, many people in the world still suffer from persecution because of their race, religion, disabilities or sexuality.

One of the projects of this scheme is to keep alive the music of the death camps and a choir sang a Czech folksong composed by Gideon Klein (1919-45) while in the Terezin Concentration Camp.

Dr. Dolf Mogendorff spoke about his parents who survived the Holocaust in Holland and a group of young people acted out the story of Anna, a recent refugee w

ho fled to the UK from Eritrea.

Liesl Carter, who has only recently tracked down her father’s grave in Germany, lit candles and recited the commitments of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Rudi Leavor sang the mourning prayer El Male Rachamim and led the minute’s silence.

 

 

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 Written:        

 

I am keeping up with the weekly challenge and have had one short story accepted, one rejected (well send back for re-editing) and read out two of my pieces on local radio.



 

Watched:        Borgen, The Shrine, episode 1 of the new series of the excellent Moving On plus  cried my way through Call the Midwife.

Went to see the National Theatre production of The Magistrate screened locally.  Academy Award nominee and Tony Award-winner John Lithgow (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Shrek, 3rd Rock from the Sun) takes the title role in this uproarious Victorian farce, with Olivier Award-winner Nancy Carroll (After the Dance) as his wife Agatha. The director is Olivier Award-winner Timothy Sheader (Crazy for You and Into the Woods, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London).

With his louche air and a developed taste for smoking, gambling, alcohol and woman, it's hard to believe Cis Farringdon is only fourteen. And that's because he isn't. When Agatha dropped five years from her true age and that of her son when she married amiable magistrate Posket, it sparks a series of hilarious indignities and outrageous mishaps.Read:              Very little

Healthy Writers Group

 

Shovelled a load of snow in the past week, Pilates and some indoor exercise.  It's a start!