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return to headline pageHolocaust Memorial Day 2012
Around 80 guests attended the AJR’s Holocaust Memorial Day event at the Belsize Square Synagogue when Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg led a moving service accompanied by Chazzan Jeremy Burko from the New North London Synagogue. Felicitas Weilider, an intern from Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP), gave an address bringing her own perspectives as a young German commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day. To see pictures from this event click here
Sir Erich Reich spoke at the London Borough of Barnet’s annual service and AJR Director, Michael Newman, gave a reading at the London Jewish Cultural Centre’s event. The AJR was also represented at events at Sussex University, which the AJR supported, the Holocaust Centre in Nottingham, London City Hall and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s National commemoration. Members also attended events in Scotland including East Renfrewshire Council and the annual Holocaust Memorial Day University of Glasgow lecture, now in its 12th year. Visitors at the Dundee City Council event had the opportunity to view the AJR Scotland Memorial Book. Click here to read a report about this event.
On the evening of 26 January, the AJR’s Tony Grenville conducted a 'Face-to Face' interview with AJR member Otto Deutsch at the Austrian Cultural Forum during which they talked about Otto’s life as a child in Vienna, his experiences under the Nazis and on the Kindertransport, and his subsequent life in Britain. The lecture hall was filled to capacity, and the audience was very moved by the dignity, clarity and lack of bitterness with which Otto Deutsch spoke. Tony’s book, Stimmen der Flucht: Österreichische Emigration nach Großbritannien ab 1938, in which Otto Deutsch appears, was given its UK launch.
In the north of the country, AJR members participated at events at Liverpool Town Hall and at the Museum of Liverpool and our members were guest speakers at City Council and schools events in Derbyshire, Preston, Leeds City Library, and at Kirklees, Calderdale, Hull and Bradford. AJR members were also guest speakers at commemorations in Darlington, Barnsley, Leeds and at York University, the Manchester Jewish Museum, Manchester Town Hall, at the Millenium Gallery and University in Sheffield. The AJR’s latest memorial book, for members in the South West Region, was launched at Bournemouth University’s event.