Holocaust Survivors share wartime experiences with students

At the end of January and beginning of February 2018, over 2,000 students and 110 teachers from 19 schools will mark Holocaust Memorial Day at a series of Northwood Holocaust Memorial Day Events hosted by Northwood United Synagogue and Northwood & Pinner Liberal Synagogue.

The students, from years 8 to 12, will have the rare opportunity to hear moving testimony from a Holocaust survivor and participate in an educational workshop relating historical facts about the Holocaust to contemporary issues. Sessions will conclude with closing reflections from each synagogue’s Rabbi and the lighting of a memorial candle.

Schools represented are: Bishop’s Ramsey School (Ruislip) Hockerill College (Bishops Stortford), Rosedale College (Hayes), Watford Girls’ Grammar (Watford), Parmiter’s School (Watford), Royal Masonic School (Rickmansworth), Marlborough School (St Albans), Goffs School (Cheshunt), Douay Martyrs School (Ickenham), Guru Nanak Sikh (Hayes), Avanti School (Pinner), Nower Hill School (Pinner), Kings Langley School, Merchant Taylors’ School (Northwood), St Helen’s School (Northwood), Northwood College, Harefield School (Harefield), Thomas Alleyne (Stevenage) and Hitchin Boys’ School.

The events are part of a bigger programme of Holocaust Memorial Day  activities involving over 3,000 pupils representing more than 50 schools across Hertfordshire and the London Boroughs of Harrow and Hillingdon. The programme, whose theme this year is ‘The Power of Words’, aims to educate students about the Nazi atrocities, make a connection between the Holocaust and subsequent genocides and invite students to consider their personal responsibility to promote tolerance in today’s world.

A Closing Ceremony on 7 February will be attended by The Rt Hon Sir Eric Pickles, Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust issues, who works closely with a wide range of Holocaust academics, survivors and educational and social organisations in the UK. During this event, Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg will share his harrowing experiences of ghetto life in Riga, Latvia and Stutthof concentration camp, Poland. For many years, he could not bring himself to speak of his wartime experiences but, with the rise of Holocaust deniers and antisemitism, he became convinced of the need for survivors to speak out to ensure that the younger generation knows what really happened.