WORCESTERSHIRE’s largest social landlord will mark Holocaust Memorial Day by supporting a civic event to commemorate it.
Representatives from Platform Housing Group will attend an event in Worcester’s Guildhall on Thursday (January 27) which aims to raise awareness of conditions which led to tragedies of Holocaust and other genocides in history.
Holocaust Memorial Day 2022 marks the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz which remains probably the most widely recognisable symbol of failure of human nature but it certainly was not the only time when genocide was committed.
This year’s event will be socially distanced due to Covid regulations. The Mayor of Worcester and other community and religious leaders, alongside local students will offer their contributions.
The event is being organised by Worcestershire Inter Faith Forum with support from Platform Housing Group, University of Worcester and Worcester City Council.
Keynote speaker Dr Mindu Hornick MBE will be the guest of honour at the ceremony. Born in Czechoslovakia, as a young girl Mindu miraculously survived both the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and a slave labour facility during World War Two.
She has spent the last two decades educating audiences – especially young people – about the dangers of intolerance and growing levels of Islamophobia and anti-semitism in the world.
Tom Piotrowski, diversity and inclusion manager at Platform Housing Group said: “This year’s theme of the Holocaust Memorial Day reminds while putting aside One Day to remember the victims of Holocaust and other genocides, we have to be vigilant about conditions leading to such tragedies every day, not only one day with a year.
Mayor of Worcester, Coun Stephen Hodgson, said: “It is essential we commemorate and remember all those who suffered and died in the Holocaust – and that we all take this opportunity to vow that this will never be allowed to happen again.”
The statistics make for sobering reading; in 2017/18, there were 94,098 hate crime offences recorded by the police in England and Wales, an increase of 17 per cent compared with the previous year.
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