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.
Our 2026 events
We focused on the theme Bridging Generations. John Wood presented a brilliantly researched and illustrated talk about his father, 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. Siriol Hugh-Jones played Schumann’s Träumerei on the cello, recreating what cellist and Bergen Belsen survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was forced to play to Dr Mengele when in Auschwitz. Peter Holmes chaired a lively Q&A session. Tim Locke talked about the importance of passing Holocaust and other genocide stories down through the generations, and highlighted the unifying wo
Our 2025 events
The theme for HMD 2025 was For a Better Future. For our main event we had two speakers to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Anita Peleg (pictured), from Generation 2 Generation, told the remarkable story of her mother Naomi Blake, who suffered deportation to Auschwitz, forced labour in a bomb factory and a death march, then rebuilt her life in Britain as a sculptor. Joanna Clarke, a history teacher at Hurst College, talked about her experiences as a Holocaust educator, running multiple educational trips to Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen. She explained how, as we get further from the Holocaust, we can try and get closer to the truth. Two musicians from Lewes-based Movingsounds, played a range of Jewish music.
The following day we held a children’s event, where author Miriam Halahmy gave a talk about her children’s novel Saving Hanno: a Refugee Boy, about a boy who comes to England on a Kindertransport and has to save his dog. This was followed up by a fun, interactive writing workshop about how it feels to be a refugee in a foreign country.
On Holocaust Memorial Day itself we held our traditional evening vigil on Cliffe Bridge in Lewes, with readings, contemplation and short speeches.
Depot cinema screened the 1961 classic Judgement at Nuremberg, the highly acclaimed fictionalisation of one of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals conducted after the Second World War. Our Chair Tim Locke gave a short talk about his own connections with his mother’s birthplace town of Dachau before a screening of A Real Pain, a powerfully funny, emotionally resonant dramedy about two American cousins who visit Poland for a Holocaust tour to honour their dead grandmother.
The 2024 HMD theme was The Fragility of Freedom. This emphasises the dangerous ease by which basic human freedoms can be lost, and persecuted people can become victims of genocide.
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 2026 events
We focused on the theme Bridging Generations. John Wood presented a brilliantly researched and illustrated talk about his father, 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. Siriol Hugh-Jones played Schumann’s Träumerei on the cello, recreating what cellist and Bergen Belsen survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was forced to play to Dr Mengele when in Auschwitz. Peter Holmes chaired a lively Q&A session. Tim Locke talked about the importance of passing Holocaust and other genocide stories down through the generations, and highlighted the unifying wo
rk of footballer Eric Murangwa, who survived the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda and has now returned to the country to run a football foundation for young people, effectively using the sport for previous enemy tribes to work together. We also had music in the form of the song Wiegele, performed by Weiping Hao – this was written in Theresienstadt by Ilse Weber, who looked after children there and volunteered to go with them and her son to the gas chamber in Auschwitz.
Tim Locke also spoke about his family story before the film A Real Pain at Lewes Film Club, while as an opener from the film Desperate Journey at Depot cinema Peter Holmes gave a PowerPoint presentation about his family’s escape from Vienna after the Anschluss.
Our 2025 events
The theme for HMD 2025 was For a Better Future. For our main event we had two speakers to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Anita Peleg (pictured), from Generation 2 Generation, told the remarkable story of her mother Naomi Blake, who suffered deportation to Auschwitz, forced labour in a bomb factory and a death march, then rebuilt her life in Britain as a sculptor. Joanna Clarke, a history teacher at Hurst College, talked about her experiences as a Holocaust educator, running multiple educational trips to Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen. She explained how, as we get further from the Holocaust, we can try and get closer to the truth. Two musicians from Lewes-based Movingsounds, played a range of Jewish music.
The following day we held a children’s event, where author Miriam Halahmy gave a talk about her children’s novel Saving Hanno: a Refugee Boy, about a boy who comes to England on a Kindertransport and has to save his dog. This was followed up by a fun, interactive writing workshop about how it feels to be a refugee in a foreign country.
On Holocaust Memorial Day itself we held our traditional evening vigil on Cliffe Bridge in Lewes, with readings, contemplation and short speeches.
Depot cinema screened the 1961 classic Judgement at Nuremberg, the highly acclaimed fictionalisation of one of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals conducted after the Second World War. Our Chair Tim Locke gave a short talk about his own connections with his mother’s birthplace town of Dachau before a screening of A Real Pain, a powerfully funny, emotionally resonant dramedy about two American cousins who visit Poland for a Holocaust tour to honour their dead grandmother.
Our 2024 events
The 2024 HMD theme was The Fragility of Freedom. This emphasises the dangerous ease by which basic human freedoms can be lost, and persecuted people can become victims of genocide.
- We held our main event in Trinity St John sub Castro Church in Lewes, which was completely packed for the event. Three instrumentalists from the world-famous She’Koyokh band played wonderful klezmer and Balkan music. Our two speakers were Rafael Behr, the political columnist for the Guardian, and Parisian schoolteacher Eric Mandalain, who gave an extraordinarily moving account of educating students as peacemakers. This was followed by a short Vigil in the church.
- Depot screened four films, three of which were introduced by Lewes HMD Group members with their own personal take on the subject of each film. One Life, the true story of Nicholas Winton’s rescue of Czech children by arranging transports to Britain; The Promise, an epic set in the Armenian genocide; Trezoros: The Lost Jews of Kastoria, a wonderful documentary chronicling the Jewish life and culture in a Greek village (followed by Q&A with the director); and The Zone of Interest, the highly acclaimed film imagining SS Officer Rudolf Höss’s family in their house adjacent to Auschwitz.
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