27 January is Holocaust Memorial Day and ahead of this day of remembrance, National Prison Radio welcomed several special guests to our studios in HMP Brixton.
Holocaust Memorial Day is the anniversary date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the largest Nazi concentration camp.
Dr. Martin Stern MBE is one of the few living survivors of the Holocaust, having been sent as a child to concentration camps in the Netherlands and Czech Republic during the World War II.
Martin told National Prison Radio of the horrors of living under Nazi occupation, and the string of events that led to him being caught and sent to a camp at the age of just five.
Martin explained to National Prison Radio why he has dedicated his life to telling his story:
“We can’t change the past, but there’s a big problem with the present and there are big threats for the future. It’s incumbent on all of us to try and do what we can to educate the human race.
There is only one race, the human race. That’s how we need to think. Although my story is about the Jewish Holocaust, the importance is for the human race.”
Joining Martin on National Prison Radio was Rachel Century from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
Rachel spoke to our team inside HMP Brixton about the importance of remembering the horrors of the Holocaust, as well as subsequent genocides all over the world, so that they may not be repeated.
Rachel says: “At Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, we suggest that by marking Holocaust Memorial Day, we are contributing to a future where, all being well, there will be no more genocide.”
The Trust have partnered with Novus who deliver education in over 50 prisons and devised a lesson plan for anybody in prisons that wants to learn more about the Holocaust, Nazi persecution of the other groups and also about the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
NPR Talk broadcasts every Wednesday at 12:00 and 18:00 on National Prison Radio.
