He said: “Let us choose good. Let us choose hope.”
Rabbi Daniel Walker with police last October after the attack on his shul (Photo by PAUL CURRIE/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images
Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis spoke about the responsibility of every subsequent generation to learn from the past to build a better future.
He said: “We must be the bridge between… firsthand witnesses, the lived memory, and the learnt memory.
“Between the horrific evils of the past and what will hopefully be a more understanding future.”
Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis speaks (HMDT)[Missing Credit]
The evening was attended by hundreds of civic, political, communal and religious leaders and compered by BBC news presenter Clive Myrie.
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BBC news presenter Clive Myrie comperes the event (HMDT)[Missing Credit]
Former chancellor Sir Sajid Javid, now chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT), said the memorial event comes at a time when the “Jewish community is still coming to terms with the murderous attack at Heaton Park Synagogue”.
Warning that antisemitism “has risen to shocking levels” worldwide, he said: “We are here because we know how vital it is to remember the Holocaust. And we are committed also to remembering what led up to it, the centuries of antisemitism.”
He added: “Together we remember the past, and together we can, and we must protect the future.”
Communities secretary Steve Reed spoke about Mala Tribich becoming the first Holocaust survivor to address the Cabinet. He also recalled a trip to Auschwitz that he went on with students in his constituency, and described the “profound” impact of seeing rooms of shoes and hair taken from victims of the Holocaust.
Reed said: “Jewish schools, synagogues, community centres are today surrounded by barbed wire, and online one is only a few clicks away from images and messages that could have come straight from the Third Reich.”
Citing the antisemitic terror attacks last year in Manchester and Sydney, he said: “It all leads to Heaton Park. It leads to Bondi Beach. None of this is normal, and none of this is acceptable. Six million voices are calling to us from history not so long ago. The next generation has the right to hear the lessons that they are telling us.”
Dov Forman, great-grandson of Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert, read from Lily’s Promise: How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live, the memoir she wrote with him. Comedy star Matt Lucas also read, from I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror by Pierre Seel. The Dream by Avraham Koplowicz was read by actress Louisa Clein.
Videos highlighting educational visits carried out this year by various survivors including Henny Franks and Peter Lantos BEM were shown interspersed between proceedings, as well as reflections from the students they spoke to.
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Sir Sajid Javid and David Lammy in the audience (HMDT)[Missing Credit]
A candle lighting ceremony included survivors of the Holocaust, and of the Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur genocides.
The Holocaust Memorial Day prayer was said by The Right Reverend and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally, DBE, The Lord Bishop of London, Archbishop-elect.
Closing remarks were made by Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) who called on everyone to join commemoration efforts by lighting a candle at 8pm.
