Saturday 24 January 15.00 (doors open 14.30) till 17.00 Trinity St John Sub Castro Church, Abinger Place, Lewes BN7 2QA. Entrance is free; no booking required. (Note this is not a church event; this venue has been hired for the purpose.) Retiring collection. John Wood will present a 40-minute talk with archival photos and testimony about his father Leonard Berney, who was one of the first of the Allied troops through the gates of the disease-ridden, overcrowded Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where he came face-to-face with its many horrors. He remained there for 14 weeks, helping save as many lives as possible, and becoming the Commander of the Belsen Displaced Persons Camp. Initially, Leonard never spoke about Belsen but on the 30th anniversary of the liberation he told John the whole story. On discovering, some years later, the existence of Holocaust denial he was outraged and started to speak publicly about his Belsen experience.
There will be opportunity for Q&A with John and with members of the Lewes HMD Group who will also share some of their personal thoughts on the theme.
Plus live music, with Siriol Hugh-Jones (cello solo) and Weiping Hao (soprano).
Films
A Real Pain (12A; USA 2024, 90 mins)
Friday 23 January 19:30, All Saints Centre, Friars Walk, Lewes. Lewes Film Club. Non-members £7; members free (half-year membership for 13 films, £50 available from January; membership available on the door.
A powerfully funny, critically acclaimed and emotionally resonant dramedy about two American cousins who visit Poland for a Holocaust tour to honour their dead grandmother. Jesse Eisenberg stars and is writer-director, drawing on his own life experiences; Kieran Culkin is the co-star. Before the screening, Lewes Holocaust Memorial Day Group co-chair Tim Locke will give a 20-minute talk about his own experiences through childhood and later visiting his mother’s birthplace town of Dachau, from which she and her family were expelled by Nazis in 1939.
‘The writing is sublimely satisfying and textured, the characters persuasively realised, and the jostling, combative dialogue feels fully alive and refreshingly unpredictable, rather than a laboured assortment of words on a page. Eisenberg’s accomplished direction strikes a delicate balance between irreverence and pathos, between pacy, quickfire comedy and the moments in which the confluence between the past and the future weighs so heavily that it’s hard to breathe.’ The Guardian
Desperate Journey Wednesday 28 January, 17:30. Depot cinema Pinwell Road, Lewes BN7 2JS, lewesdepot.org. £10/£5. The gripping and extraordinary true story of Auschwitz survivor Freddie Knoller, whose Jewish parents confront the escalating threat of Nazi rule in Vienna after the Anschluss of 1938. His brother is sent to America, while the younger Freddie remains behind, initially sheltered by his parents until circumstances force him to flee on his own, encountering danger and romance in the burlesque world of 1940s Paris.
Before the film Lewes resident Peter Holmes will give a talk about his mother's and grandmother's escape from Vienna in the wake of the Anschluss in 1938.
‘A five-star history lesson that will keep Holocaust memories alive.’ Jewish Chronicle
Statement from the group
We grieve for the innocent lives being lost in conflicts throughout the world, and hope for peaceful solutions in the near future.
We hope that by remembering the Holocaust and other genocides and by recounting what happened to individuals who suffered we can reinforce the message of our common humanity.
Saturday 24 January 15.00 (doors open 14.30) till 17.00 Trinity St John Sub Castro Church, Abinger Place, Lewes BN7 2QA. 
