Holocaust Memorial Day Event – An opportunity to reflect, remember, listen and learn as a community

Salisbury City Council are working with three local residents to build this memorial day event around the stories of their own families as we reflect on this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day theme for 2023, ‘Ordinary People’.

The Mayor of Salisbury, Cllr Tom Corbin will host this event at Salisbury Guildhall at 10am on the Friday 27 January, so that local residents, students, representatives of faith and community groups can come together to share stories, and to take the time to increase our understanding of the impacts of genocide on ordinary lives and on our world today.

The event this year will be built around the accounts of three local people and their families’ experience of the Holocaust. One of our speakers, Alexandra Boyd, said “I am taking part in this event to tell of my family history because I see the joy in my children’s eyes being allowed to celebrate who they are. Something that was and is still denied to many people today! It is important to educate and not let others forget.”

Ilana Natelova, who will also be speaking at the event, said “I feel that it is my duty to share my Grandparent’s legacy. I would not be here, had my Grandparents not dreamed of a safe place to live, to have acted bravely and with constant perseverance to find refuge in a place they knew very little about; a different culture, language, etc. They gave themselves the chance of survival, and a right to live without fear”.

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) takes place each year on 27 January. The international day remembers the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution of other groups and in genocides that followed in, for example, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

This year the event will include a 2-minute silence, live and recorded music written by survivors and local young people. Students from Wyvern St Edmunds Schools will sing a piece written as part of a previous education project with Multitude of Voices and video materials from the Holocaust Memorial Day trust will help us to recognise the elements of genocide and remember marginalised groups who were impacted by the Holocaust alongside the Jewish People.

History students from Salisbury Sixth form will place the direct accounts of survivors of genocide by reading three accounts, from The Holocaust from the Genocide in Rwanda and the massacre as Srebrenica.

This event will ask those in attendance to join in the reading of the Stockholm Statement of commitment, written at the foundation of Holocaust Memorial Day, and to mark our City’s commitment to remember by writing in a memorial book. This book will be opened annually at the Guildhall from 2023 onwards.

The Holocaust Memorial Book will also be open for members of the public to sign after the event from 1 – 5pm in the Guildhall.

Mayor of Salisbury, Cllr Tom Corbin said, “I encourage people to come along to Salisbury Guildhall on Holocaust Memorial Day, 27th January to attend this very poignant event, to learn and share stories from local people whose families have suffered from such horrific hate crimes and to help ensure future generations pledge to stand against such hatred.”

Anyone who wishes to attend can contact Salisbury City Council by Wednesday 25 January, 5pm on 01722 342860 or corporate@salisburycitycouncil.gov.uk