Friends mark Holocaust Memorial
‘Always, at these events, there is the harrowing – but necessary – testimony of individual survivors.'
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has marked Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) and the eightieth anniversary since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. This year also sees the thirtieth anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.
Attending two national events for HMD, Oliver Robertson, head of witness and worship for BYM, said: ‘Always, at these events, there is the harrowing – but necessary – testimony of individual survivors. At an event in Lambeth Palace run by the Council of Christians and Jews, participants heard from Martin Stern, who was born in the Netherlands and arrested by the Nazis while at nursery school. His sister was arrested aged just one.’
Meanwhile, at the national commemoration organised by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, ‘we heard from Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) who described the family separation, death and theft of a normal childhood that the genocide wrought’.
Another survivor underlined the importance of continuing to ‘tell their story so that the truth of it doesn’t get turned into one narrative among other (false) ones’.
