I have been attending Barnet Council’s Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies for nearly a decade and they always leave me reflecting afresh on the horrific scale of the atrocity that saw millions of people murdered because of their ethnicity, their religion, their disability, their sexual orientation or just because they spoke out against a brutal regime.
It is right that we take time each year out of our busy schedules to remember the victims of the Holocaust and ask once again how it was that so many people stood by and let it happen.
This year’s commemoration event at Middlesex University’s Ricketts Quadrangle heard from a number of speakers. The leader of the Council, Richard Cornelius gave a very moving speech reminding us all that our borough’s diversity and its flourishing Jewish community means Holocaust Memorial Day will always resonate strongly with us here in North London. Myra Perry, Pro Vice Chancellor of Middlesex University described how her grandparents found sanctuary in London after escaping the pogroms of Eastern Europe.
Local resident, Darwin Bernardo, told us how his family fled from civil war in Angola to make a home in Barnet and how he has been inspired by the welcome he received here to work to bridge divisions within our own communities. Last of all Mr Mal Berisha from the Albanian Embassy provided a heart warming account of how people in Albania defied the Nazis and protected their Jewish population.
Although we had our ceremony in Barnet on Sunday, Holocaust Memorial Day is actually this coming Sunday – 27th January. At 10.25 in the evening on that day, BBC One will be showing a film called Prisoner A26188. I have a personal interest in the film because it was produced by my sister-in-law, Lisa Bryer. It tells the story of Lisa’s aunt Henia, and what she experienced during the Holocaust. I would encourage you all to watch it, as hearing directly from Holocaust survivors is a crucial way to understand what really happened.
Henia lost her father, brother and sister, survived four concentration camps, and went on to bear witness to the creation of Israel in 1948. Now in her eighties, Henia's harrowing personal testimony starts with her family's removal from their home in Radom, Poland, to the ghetto, then Plaszow concentration camp, made famous by Schindler's list, on to Majdanek then Auschwitz and finally Bergen-Belsen. She describes with calm and dignity the terrors of the camps, the cruelty of the SS, the Death March and how she survived.