Community gathers to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in Bath

A special ceremony for communities in Bath and North East Somerset to remember the anniversary of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust took place in Bath.

The ‘Fragility of Freedom’ event on Thursday 25 January at the Guildhall was organised by Bath & North East Somerset Council and Bath Interfaith Group to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day which takes place on 27 January each year.

As well as the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, the day also remembers the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution of other groups and in more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

The event heard from guest speakers delivering poems, music and reflections on Holocaust Memorial Day, including Yolanda Ropschitz-Bentham, a retired psychology teacher and editor of two published books about Ferramonti, the Italian internment camp where her father was imprisoned during the war.

It was attended by Mr Mohammed Saddiq, His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset, Councillor Dine Romero, the Mayor of Bath, Bath & North East Somerset Council Chair, Councillor Sarah Moore, MP for Bath Wera Hobhouse and the Chair of Bath Interfaith Group David Musgrave.    

Councillor Sarah Moore, Chair of the Council, gave the opening address at the event. She said: “Thank you to everyone who joined us for this important and powerful commemoration of the millions of people who were victims of genocide. Freedom means different things to different people, but what is clear is that those who are targeted for persecution have had their freedom restricted and removed before many of them are murdered. This is often a subtle and slow process.

“Yesterday evening’s event afforded us all a chance to reflect on the fact that many people in western democracies take freedoms for granted and consider what we can do to strengthen freedoms around the world.”

The event was held on the Alkmaar room in the Guildhall named in honour of the link between Alkmaar and Bath. In May 1940 Elias Prins a young Jewish man from Alkmaar escaped from Nazi-occupied Holland on a fishing boat and came to live in Bath with his sister.