An event for Holocaust Memorial Day, hosted by the Bournemouth and Poole Holocaust Memorial Committee, will be held at the Lighthouse Poole this year on January 29.
The Bournemouth and Poole HMD Committee will host the free-to-attend Memorial Day event at the Lighthouse, Poole on Sunday, January 29th. The theme this year is “Ordinary People” to commemorate those who quietly help those in need and do extraordinary things to make the community a better place.
The Act of Commemoration, which will mark the start of the event, will commemorate all the ordinary adults and young people who have quietly done extraordinary things.
Speaking about theme of ‘Ordinary People’ Lynda Ford-Horne, one of the organisers of Bournemouth and Poole Holocaust Memorial Day, said:
“Ordinary people were perpetrators, bystanders, rescuers, witnesses – and ordinary people were victims. Our theme this year highlights the ordinary people who let genocide happen, the ordinary people who actively perpetrated genocide, and the ordinary people who were persecuted. The event will also prompt us to consider how we can perhaps play a bigger part than we might imagine in challenging prejudice today.”
Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines MBE will be the event’s main speaker where she shares her story as a Holocaust survivor.
In her talk, Lady Milena will share her story of survival at 10 years old when her father was forewarned to leave the country before the Nazi invasion due to his involvement with Thomas Mann, who was known to be a supporter of the democratic Czechoslovak state and government against the German nationalist Sudeten movement.
The family were able to leave Prague on the last Kindertransport train that left Prague on 31st July 1939 with the help of Trevor Chadwick and Nicholas Winton, organisers of the Kindertransport operation which brought nearly 10,000 Jewish children in danger to the United Kingdom.
Lady Milena continued her schooling at a refugee Czechoslovak school in Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales, where she finished in 1945. After school, she went on to obtain her Nursery Nursing Diploma and worked in a children’s home before moving to France to work as an Au Pair for 2 years. In 1954, Lady Milena married her husband, Sir George Grenfell-Baines, who she had 2 children with, and now has 4 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren.
Bournemouth and Poole HMD Committee is hoping to fill all 669 seats in the Lighthouse Theatre, as this is the same number of children that were rescued on the last Kindertransport train.
The official Holocaust Memorial Day is on 27 January, marking the liberation of Auschwitz. It is an annual event to commemorate and remember the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution and in genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.
Lynda Ford-Horne, said:
“With the current struggles that everyone is facing, acts of kindness are so important to pull communities back together and remind everyone that you don’t have to have a lot to be able to help someone else.
“We’re so grateful to Lady Milena for being willing to share her story. We must continue to remember and share these stories and to forever honour the victims and survivors.”
The free memorial event is being held at the Lighthouse Poole on Sunday, January 29 from 2 pm to 4.30 pm, and can be booked on Eventbrite at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/commemoration-of-holocaust-memorial-day-2023-tickets-483001479427
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