Among local Yom Hashoah events around the country, Budapest-born survivor Edgar Guest addressed the Southend and Westcliff community on how civilised, cultural societies engaged in mass murder.
"I give talks at schools because I want the young to learn about the events that shaped a Jewish boy during the 15 years ended 1945," he said."Antisemitism in Hungary is endemnic going back to the Middle Ages. Between April and July 1944, 430,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to their deaths."
Mr Guest survived the ghetto by collecting dead bodies to get extra food.
Ort UK held a charity screening of Shoah-related film The Zookeeper's Wife to a sell-out audience. Guests were also told about Ort's educational work during the Nazi occupation, especially within the Warsaw and Kovno ghettos where the charity educated thousands of people in desperate conditions.
The League of Jewish Women marked Yom Hashoah with a talk by Annick Lever at the Jewish Museum in Camden. Ms Lever, a league member, was saved as a baby by a French family after her mother was shot by the Nazis. She did not find out she was Jewish until she was a teenager.
Pinner Synagogue’s event attracted more than 350 people to hear Leslie Kleinman retell his story of survival.
The 87-year-old was incarcerated in Auschwitz at the age of 15. His mother and six younger siblings were killed immediately and on liberation in 1945, he discovered that his remaining older sister had recently died.
“The problem is that people forget the Holocaust," he said. "So what I want to pass on is do not hate anybody. Be tolerant because hate only causes hate."
