HET honours Holocaust survivors and heroes at annual dinner - The Jewish Chronicle

The Holocaust Educational Trust’s held its annual dinner on Monday – raising £1.5m – the largest sum the charity has raised on a single night.

Among the guests at the dinner which marked 80 years since the was former US antisemitism tsar Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt, 78, was, in 2021, appointed by President Biden to serve as the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism, and in 2023, she was listed as one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine.

Professor Ambassador Derborah Lipstadt was the keynote speaker on the night (Photo: HET)[Missing Credit]

She famously won a landmark British High Court libel case against David Irving, who had sued her for claiming he was a Holocaust denier. She told guests that after winning that case 25 years ago “we thought, perhaps naively so, that we had decimated Holocaust denial. In the past few years, we have seen clearly that we have not.”

She said that today there are “too many people who are not sure whether antisemitism is entirely unjustified. ‘What are the Jews complaining about?’ they ask. Simply put, these people either fail to take antisemitism seriously or consider a Jew’s complaints about it unjustified or, even worse, as a foil to cover up for other things.

Lipstadt called antisemitism “the longest or oldest continuous hatred”, adding: “We must fight and fight. We will overcome. We have overcome far worse”, before being given a standing ovation.

Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich MBE and 100-year-old British veteran Mervyn Kersh were among more than 600 guests at the dinner, who included the Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, broadcaster Nick Robinson, former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, broadcaster and JC columnist Rob Rinder, and actors Tracey-Ann Oberman and Louisa Clein.

Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich MBE with Holocaust Educational Trust ambassador Salvatore (Photo: HET)[Missing Credit]

Sharing the powerful story of her early life with guests, Tribich said: “Today, 80 years on, survivors like me worry about whether people will learn from the past. And we worry about a future where Jewish people still face antisemitism, the hatred that we hoped and prayed we would never see again. So, we share our stories, and the young people we speak to promise they will never forget. They promise they will speak out.”

She added: “Holocaust Educational Trust Ambassadors are keeping our stories alive. Hope was needed 80 years ago, and hope is needed today. For survivors like me, the Holocaust Educational Trust and their ambassadors are our hope. I believe in them.”

There are currently hundreds of ambassadors of the trust, who speak in schools, community groups and workplaces across the country.

Also attending the dinner was Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Secretary of State for Communities Steve Reed and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Pat McFadden.

Justice Minister Sarah Sackman and Schools Minister Georgia Gould were also there, along with Labour Party Chair Anna Turley, Securities Minister Dan Jarvis and Treasury Minister Dan Tomlinson.

The evening’s proceedings also honoured Holocaust survivors and educators Lily Ebert MBE and Eve Kugler BEM, who have passed away in the last year.

Guests listened to Richard Dimbleby’s harrowing first-hand account of driving through Bergen-Belsen, followed by a moving rendition of the Hatikvah, sung by those who had just been liberated. Dimbleby’s report was one of the world’s first from a concentration camp, and his description of what he witnessed was so graphic the BBC initially refused to broadcast his despatch, relenting only when the war correspondent threatened to resign.

Chancellor Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, Professor Ambassador Deborah Lipsadt, HET CEO Karen Pollock CBE (Photo: HET)[Missing Credit]

TV presenter and anchor Natasha Kaplinsky OBE compered the evening. She became a member of the then Prime Minister David Cameron’s Holocaust Commission in 2014 and went on to interview more than 100 Holocaust survivors on camera. She said it “was truly the greatest privilege of my professional career, and I know I will never do anything more important.”

The Trust also marked the first year of its Testimony 360: People and Places of the Holocaust programme and celebrated its recent awards, including a Charity Award in the education category and a Third Sector Award for Digital Innovation of the Year.

Reflecting on the challenges of the past year and the impact of the Trust’s work, Chief Executive Karen Pollock CBE said: “Most of the young people we teach have never met a Jewish person in their lives. They enter the classroom with impressions and opinions, and they leave with facts and truth.

"They learn where antisemitism came from, where it led, and what it looks like today. They stand at the very places where the Holocaust happened. They listen to survivors. They used the latest technology to learn about the oldest hatred – and they are changed by it."

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