Past Events
We started in 2015 on the theme of The Survival of the Human Spirit, focusing on the fate of those deported to Theresienstadt ghetto. Speeches, a klezmer band, poetry reading by students from Priory School and a packed audience in the White Hart Hotel.
On a still winter’s night on January 27 2020 we held a lantern-lit vigil on Cliffe Bridge, with a series of moving readings and short speeches, and read the Kaddish (Jewish prayer for the dead).
In 2016 we held our main event in Lewes Town Hall, with a varied programme of events including music composed in 1940 by Holocaust victim Hans Neumeyer
We have twice organised exhibitions about refugees in shop windows, the length of Lewes’ long high street.
Workshops on writing haiku and prose, a concert at St John sub Castro featuring choirs, bands and soloists, feature films and a short made by a local film-maker are just some of our activities from past years.
The organisers would like to thank Lewes Town Council, Lewes District Council and Depot cinema for their generous support.
Here is what we covered in our January 2023 events.
Our events:
We started in 2015 on the theme of The Survival of the Human Spirit, focusing on the fate of those deported to Theresienstadt ghetto. Speeches, a klezmer band, poetry reading by students from Priory School and a packed audience in the White Hart Hotel.
On a still winter’s night on January 27 2020 we held a lantern-lit vigil on Cliffe Bridge, with a series of moving readings and short speeches, and read the Kaddish (Jewish prayer for the dead).
In 2016 we held our main event in Lewes Town Hall, with a varied programme of events including music composed in 1940 by Holocaust victim Hans Neumeyer
We have twice organised exhibitions about refugees in shop windows, the length of Lewes’ long high street.
Workshops on writing haiku and prose, a concert at St John sub Castro featuring choirs, bands and soloists, feature films and a short made by a local film-maker are just some of our activities from past years.
The organisers would like to thank Lewes Town Council, Lewes District Council and Depot cinema for their generous support.
Our 2023 events
The national theme for 2023 was Ordinary People. It’s an interesting concept – can be applied to the role of ordinary people as victims, helpers, perpetrators or just ordinary folk who stood by and did nothing during the Holocaust and other genocides.
Here is what we covered in our January 2023 events.
- A book discussion at Lewes Library on the Holocaust/genocide theme, led by Janina.
- A display at the library of books and DVDs related to the Holocaust and other genocides – these items were put on display in two racks during January and February.
- Two wonderful films for screening at Depot cinema in Lewes, with two of our members introducing the films with references to their own family experiences.. Peter Kammerling introduced Three Minutes: a Lengthening, a window into prewar Jewish life in Poland; and Jackie Stimpson spoke before the sell-out showing of Louis Malle’s autobiographical masterpiece Au Revoir les Enfants.
- A 40-minute lantern-lit vigil on a chilly but thankfully dry evening on Cliffe Bridge, attended by about 70 people, with speeches, poetry readings and a minute’s silence – on the theme of ‘ordinary people’ – including a young student refugee from Ukraine. Jeffrey led the reading of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.
- Christine’s event looking at personal letters written during the Holocaust, in a small group session at Depot’s Studio room. Two fascinating hours of discussion: you can read the letters by clicking here.
- Music and words on the HMD theme ‘Ordinary People’ in a ceilidh-like evening. Pam et des Femmes provided a moving selection of world music, and the Lewes-based Treble Makers entertained us singing a capella. Speeches and readings, including a very recently discovered account of a Jew’s life in Nazi Munich and Berlin – shared publicly for the first time.
- In the week leading up to HMD we had a window display in Lewes Tourist Information Centre.
Our 2022 events
The national theme for 2022 was One Day.Our events:
- We had our usual window display in Lewes Tourist Information Centre.
- Exhibition of paintings in Depot Cinema reflecting on the One Day theme.
- Lantern-lit vigil on Cliffe Bridge: more than a hundred braved a January night on Holocaust Memorial Day – though actually the weather was remarkably benign – and stood in silence while poems and the Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead) were read. We dropped flowers into the river and concluded with a two-minute silence.
- Film at Depot: Final Account, an extraordinary documentary comprising hitherto unseen seen interviews with the last generation of everyday people who lived participated in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. It was made by the late Luke Holland, who lived in Ditchling. The film was followed by discussion and a lively Q&A with the capacity audience with the assistant director, Sam Pope. We also publicised screenings of Tom Stoppard’s play Leopoldstadt.
- Christine Cohen Park, writer and workshop convenor, led a small group event at Depot’s Studio room to reflect on oppression in its many forms
- Talks in Trinity St John sub Castro about their family stories. Jackie Stimpson on her family’s flight from the Armenian genocide and her desire for Britain to recognise the atrocity as a genocide; Simon Confino on the discovery of how the Holocaust devastated his on the day he first saw the new Holocaust Galleries at the Imperial War Museum; Tim Locke with an illustrated presentation on what the so-called Kristallnacht meant to his mother’s family in Nazi Germany and afterwards. All three were interviewed on Holocaust Memorial Day by BBC Southeast Today for the 6.30pm television news about their family experiences. You can see the interview here.
- A music and poetry evening at Depot cinema, with Adrienne Thomas and friends, against the backdrop of the art exhibition.
Lewes Holocaust Memorial Day Group