‘If I can make people realise I’m telling the story of real people – my family – that’s what’s important’ - The Jewish Chronicle

The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place annually on January 27 – marking the day that Auschwitz was liberated in 1945 – is Bridging Generations. As Holocaust survivors get older and fewer in number, it has become increasingly important to pass on their legacies to make sure that the horrors of the Shoah are never forgotten or repeated.

The HMD Trust describes this year’s theme as a “call to action”, encouraging people to tell their ancestors’ stories and reminding them that “the responsibility of remembrance doesn’t end with the survivors”. There are various organisations that exist to help descendants of Holocaust survivors keep their parents’ and grandparents’ stories alive. The JC speaks to representatives of three of them.

Hannah Goldstone has been a Holocaust educator for nearly two decades, delivering talks about her grandfather’s story at the Holocaust Centre North, where she also helps others share theirs. Hannah is also head of fundraising for the centre.

Her grandfather arrived in England on the Kindertransport from Germany when he was nine years old and made a new life in Manchester, never returning to Germany.

“My grandpa didn’t speak [about his own experiences], and I think that was for various reasons. He was one of very few survivors in his group, and I think they felt their stories weren’t as harrowing as the ones from the [concentration] camps. He was only nine when he came over here, and, in general, he just kept himself to himself.

“He passed away before I started doing any of this, and I often wonder if he’d say: ‘This is great, well done’, in a loving grandfatherly way, but I actually think he’d say: ‘Why are you doing this?’ because it wasn’t his kind of thing.

“But I love interacting with school pupils, and I think it’s so important. My favourite group to talk to is Year Six because they’re still at the age where they ask questions as they’ve not got that high school embarrassment yet.

“Very often, I’m the first Jewish person they’ve ever spoken to, and so I leave a lot of time for questions because they always have questions about being Jewish, especially since the attack on Heaton Park synagogue. That’s changed the dynamics of things a lot, including at the centre itself, which is based at the University of Huddersfield.

“You can’t put all Holocaust survivors or even all Kinder in a box because every one of them has a completely different story, even ones from the same family. And so, when people come with all of this information about their ancestors to the centre, to be able to help and support them to build a presentation around it is an incredible honour.”

Peter Kammerling has been telling his parents’ stories with Generation2Generation for three years. His mother and father came to England on separate Kindertransport from Vienna, at the ages of 12 and 15 respectively, and married in 1944, after meeting at the Anglo-Austrian Youth Club.

[Missing Credit]Peter Kammerling

“Back in the late Nineties, my father started to give talks about his experience of being on the Kindertransport. Eventually, he was awarded the British Empire Medal because he spoke to over 10,000 children. I went along to one of his talks at a school, and I was very impressed with what he did and how he did it.

“My mother came on the Kindertransport as well from Vienna with her nine-year-old brother. So, I tell both their stories within the one presentation – that’s the major difference between what my dad did and what I’m doing now.

“You want to make an impact. We do this because we want to get a message across, and the key thing is to speak to as many children as we can. The feedback for me, and I’m sure all the other speakers, is incredibly important.”

Peter Kammerling's parents, Walter and Herta Kammerling (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

“My wife and I went to Budapest some years ago, and on the way back, I was sitting next to a young lady who was a teacher who had visited the Holocaust museum in Budapest. I asked why she did that and she said that when she was 16 years old, a guy had come to talk at her school, and he’d had a real influence on her.

“It turned out that it was my dad. He was alive at the time, so I was able to tell him, and he was chuffed to bits. Out of an audience of 200 or 300 students, you have no idea whom you’re going to affect, but if you can affect a few people with what you say, make them realise that these are real people, that I’m telling the stories of my family, not some distant family – I think that’s so important.”

Joel Hockman is a Next Generations trustee at the Association for Jewish Refugees, working to cultivate a community of over 1,000 second- and third-generation descendants of Holocaust survivors and refugees. Three of his grandparents were born in Vienna, each fleeing to England just before the start of the Second World War.

Joel Hockman[Missing Credit]

“It all started when I was eight. My grandma read this story to me: Candle in the Dark by Adèle Geras [which is about two children who flee pre-war Germany on the Kindertransport].

I asked: ‘Why did this happen to them?’ and she said it was because they were Jewish.

“I almost had this fire in my belly that I couldn’t accept what had happened and because of that, I wanted to research. I was told that every single record had been destroyed, but I refused to believe that. During the pandemic, I started researching my family history. Now I have 800 people on a family tree, thousands of photographs, and relatives I didn’t know existed before.

“My grandparents belonged to the AJR. Through the AJR, I work on the Next Generations project to keep my grandparents’ stories alive and to help people connect with others who have a very similar shared history and background."

Joel Hockman's maternal grandparents, Erich and Melitta (née Maiman) Roter (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to really grasp what happened [in the Holocaust]; it’s quite a lot to think something like that could have happened to a group of people just because they were Jewish. There’s a lot of Holocaust distortion today and a lot of people who don’t know that much about it, which are also big driving factors for what I do. People don’t really understand the complexities of what happened and how easily something like that can happen. These things don’t happen overnight.

Joel's paternal grandparents, Nat & Trude (née Schlossmann) Hockman (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

“I wish my grandparents were here because I was very close to them, but I’m pleased that they don’t have to see some of the things which are happening nowadays. But at the same time, it’s sad that they can’t see how their stories are being told, and how people are connecting with each other from them.”

The Holocaust Centre North will be marking Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 with intergenerational Holocaust survivor conversations and stories from the Holocaust Centre North Archive. To book, go to: holocaustcentrenorth.org.uk/events/holocaust-memorial-day-2026/ or click here

To find out more about Generation2Generation, go to: generation2generation.org.uk/holocaust-speakers/ or click here

To find out more about the Next Generations programme at the Association of Jewish Refugees, go to: ajr.org.uk/special-interest/next-generations/ or click here

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Holocaust Memorial Day 2026