Lowestoft Town Council would like to announce that it will be holding two events to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day 2023 on Friday 27^th January.  All are welcome to attend these events.

The first event will take place inside The Parcels Office, Lowestoft Railway Station at 10am. The theme this year is ‘Ordinary People’ with the Holocaust Memorial Trust highlighting that ordinary people are involved in every level of genocide; from perpetrators to the persecuted, rescuers to bystanders.  This commemorative service will aim to highlight this theme with short readings from local schools and short talks followed by the laying of wreaths.  The Parcels Office is used with kind permission from the Wherry Lines Community Rail Partnership and the Lowestoft Central Project.

The second event will take place at Kensington Gardens at 1:30pm where a new Holocaust Memorial Bench will be unveiled alongside the memorial garden.  The bench, decorated with doves, includes the inscription “Peace is a gift to each other”, which comes from the Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, and recognises the impact we all have in preventing future genocides.

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place annually on 27th January – which is the anniversary of the liberation of concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, to remember the six million Jewish people that were murdered during the Holocaust. Millions of other people were also killed under the Nazi regime and subsequent acts of genocide around the world, such as in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

In 1938, the Kindertransport initiative was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi occupied Germany that commenced in November 1938 after the British Government agreed to allow the temporary admission for up to 10,000 unaccompanied children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, who were at risk from the Nazis. Over 500 child refugees subsequently arrived at Lowestoft Central Station in December 1938.

Some 9,500 children came to the UK and were hosted by foster families, hostels, hotels and holiday camps, before the Kindertransport ended with the outbreak of War. The majority of children saved through the Kindertransport didn’t see their families again.

Each year, Lowestoft Town Council organises commemoration events for Lowestoft to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and to remember the lives lost and affected by genocides around the world.