Melvin Cravitz, one of the victims of the antisemitic terrorist attack at Heaton Park Synagogue, was commemorated during the Anne Frank Trust annual lunch.
Melvin, 66, was murdered on Yom Kippur by terrorist Jihad Al-Shamie during an attack which left fellow congregant, Adrian Daulby, 53, dead and three others seriously injured.
At the lunch, which was held in central London, Melvin’s widow, Karen, lit a candle in his memory.
Emma Barnett, host of the BBC Today Programme, who was compering the afternoon, said Melvin was “a kind and gentle man. Karen describes him as someone who was always there, patient and reliable. Those who knew him often described him as a mensch: caring, thoughtful and always there for others.”
Melvin Cravitz, 66, died during the Yom Kippur terror attack (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]
Barnett, who grew up attending Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, added: “Karen shares Melvin’s faith in God, believing deeply that nothing happens without meaning, even when meaning cannot be understood. Holding onto her faith has helped her to keep going, and to face the world with strength despite her grief and shock.
“By lighting a candle today, Karen is honouring Melvin, and she says she wants to make him proud of her and her resilience.”
Criminal barrister and TV personality Robert Rinder MBE was the guest speaker. He commended the work of the trust, saying that while the Holocaust’s most defining image might be the concentration camps, that was not where it started, but rather where it ended.
.JPG?f=3x2&w=732&q=0.6)
Rob Rinder (Photo: Blake Ezra)(C) Blake Ezra Photography 2026 @BlakeEzraPhoto @mitzvahs.uk info@blakeezraphotography.com
“It doesn’t, of course, begin with the camps,” he said. “[Anne Frank] doesn’t tell us about those. It starts with restriction, with separation, with a quiet bureaucratic shrinking of life. The star, the banned tram, the school changed, the friends gone.
“This is so often, frankly, where we go wrong with how we remember. We begin at the end.”
He continued: “[Anne Frank] wrote: ‘I still believe that people are really good at heart.’ The Anne Frank Trust is the most articulate expression of that hope, of that possibility, of a future of courage.”
Attendees at the event raised £640,000 on the day for the organisation, which aims to empower young people aged nine to 15 to challenge all forms of prejudice, in memory of the teenage diarist, whose family was hidden in a secret annex in Amsterdam before being deported to Auschwitz and later to Bergen-Belsen. There, inhumane conditions led to Anne and her sister, Margot, dying from typhus. Her father, Otto, was the only one from the annex to survive Nazi persecution.
Abdoulie, 12, an Anne Frank Trust young ambassador, said: “Anne Frank represents a generation of lives destroyed by the horrors of the Holocaust. [Her] legacy, together with our shared passion to challenge antisemitism and all forms of prejudice, is what unites and inspires us as ambassadors.”
Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich was at the lunch (Photo: Blake Ezra)(C) Blake Ezra Photography 2026 @BlakeEzraPhoto @mitzvahs.uk info@blakeezraphotography.com
Abigail, 16, said: “We learnt about Anne Frank and the Holocaust, about anti-Jewish hatred then and now, and about different types of prejudice today. We were trained as peer educators and shared our learning with others in our schools.”
After a two-day programme delivered by the trust, the pair signed up, along with more than 200 other students in 2025 alone, for an ongoing commitment as young ambassadors.
In their role, they take part in “anti-prejudice projects… meet ambassadors from other schools, do online skills workshops, a national conference, study trips, and public speaking engagements like this one”, said Abdoulie.
This year’s lunch was the first without Eva Schloss, who passed away last month. Schloss, who had known Anne when they were both young girls, survived Auschwitz, and, after the war, became Anne Frank’s posthumous stepsister when her mother married Anne’s father Otto. In 1991, she co-founded the Anne Frank Trust in the name of her childhood friend.
Nicola Cobbold, chair of the trust, wrote in the event brochure that Schloss’ “life and work [will] continue to shape the Anne Frank Trust UK and inspire generations of young people”.
Nicola Cobbold (Photo: Blake Ezra)(C) Blake Ezra Photography 2026 @BlakeEzraPhoto @mitzvahs.uk info@blakeezraphotography.com
The lunch was also the first with new CEO Dan Green at the helm of the trust. In his speech, he said that “Anne Frank’s diary bridges generations because it speaks in a voice that never gets old. Teenage Anne has remained alive to us through her writing because her voice is honest, curious, hopeful, and very human.”
Matthew Pennycook MP, the Labour government’s housing and planning minister, also spoke, saying: “We must do more as a country to preserve the memory of the unique act of evil that was the Holocaust, and those who perished in it.
“It is also imperative that we continue to educate future generations about what happened… as a warning about what happens when antisemitism, prejudice and hatred are allowed to flourish unchecked.”
In addition to Karen Cravitz, other candle-lighters included Robert Slager, a Holocaust survivor who had also been hidden in Holland, and Julian Schild, whose father Rolf arrived in the UK on the Kindertransport and who founded the lunch.
Robert Slager (Photo: Blake Ezra)(C) Blake Ezra Photography 2026 @BlakeEzraPhoto @mitzvahs.uk info@blakeezraphotography.com
Alongside them was Katy, a 15-year-old ambassador for the Anne Frank Trust who fled Ukraine in 2022, and Sokphal Din BEM, who survived the Cambodian genocide, but witnessed unimaginable suffering, including the murder of his grandmother and brother by the Khmer Rouge.
Sokphal Din BEM (Photo: Blake Ezra)(C) Blake Ezra Photography 2026 @BlakeEzraPhoto @mitzvahs.uk info@blakeezraphotography.com
Mala Tribich MBE was also present for the lunch. She made history last week on Holocaust Memorial Day when she became the first Holocaust survivor to address a cabinet meeting in Downing Street.
Sir Sajid Javid, former Chancellor and the current chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, also attended.
(l-r) Rob Rinder, Emma Barnett, Nicola Cobbold, Tracy Berkoff and Dan Green (Photo: Blake Ezra)(C) Blake Ezra Photography 2026 @BlakeEzraPhoto @mitzvahs.uk info@blakeezraphotography.com
Last year, the Anne Frank Trust reached 132,089 young people across England and Scotland.
As a result of their core schools programme, the trust’s research found that 90.2 per cent of young people made “progress in their pro-social attitudes”, with 64.6 per cent of participants improving their attitude towards Jewish people, which the trust said was “the greatest progress towards any specific group”.
To get more from community, click here to sign up for our free community newsletter.