North Herts Council marks Holocaust Memorial Day

A special event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day took place today (27 January), to remember all those affected by genocide across the world.

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place internationally every year on 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. This year we invited local people to submit poems of a maximum of 200 words, inspired by this year’s theme ‘Ordinary people’. We received a number of poems, all of which were beautifully written, but the winning entry came from M. Anne Alexander who wrote a verse highlighting the stark reality of the Holocaust and read it aloud at the event.

Jeanette Thompson, Legal and Community Service Director, said: “This special day helps us all remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution and in the genocides which followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. It’s so important to remember, and educate younger generations, so genocide forms no part of our future. Ordinary people were involved in all aspects of the Holocaust and other genocides, ordinary people were perpetrators, bystanders, rescuers, witnesses – and ordinary people were victims.”

Watch the recording of the event on our YouTube channel.

Fine out more about Holocaust Memorial Day.

Anne’s poem: Ordinary people…

Took the train, every day.

We took it, often, to see

our grandmother.

She would welcome us

with chicken soup

to warm away chills.

Without it, her smile,

her embrace, her strength

would still have warmed us.

Only, this truck had no windows

for us to reach up to see the place

where she would have been.

When the doors burst open,

it was her gardener, re-employed,

who threw that furtive glance…

As he leads my mother, my sister

and me into the showers, he allows

me a moment to write this down,

to keep something of how,

for ordinary people,

these days have been.

M. Anne Alexander