Worcester residents are invited to gather in the city's historic Guildhall later this month to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
Hosted by Mayor of Worcester Cllr Louis Stephen, together with the Worcestershire Interfaith Forum, the event will be held on Monday 29 January at 10.30am.
The theme of this year's Memorial Day is 'Fragility of Freedom', summed up by these lines from an entry in Anne Frank's Diary, reflecting on May 1940 when the Germans arrived in the Netherlands: "That is when the trouble started for the Jews. Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees."
This year the keynote speaker will be Mr Michael Bibring, a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Michael's father Harry left Vienna for Britain on the Kindertransport as a 13-year-old, along with his sister. The plan was for their parents to later join them, but that never happened, with his father dying of a heart attack in 1940 and his mother being deported to the death camp at Sobibór in Poland in 1942.
Mayor of Worcester, Cllr Louis Stephen, said: "It is vitally important that we continue to remember the victims of the Holocaust and other genocides and that we take time to reflect on and to raise awareness of the consequences of discrimination and prejudice. We must all stand together, speak out against injustice and hatred, and vow that this will never be allowed to happen again."
All are invited to Worcester's Holocaust Memorial event – if you wish to attend, please RSVP to
