LFA NEWS

Ambassadors visit Survivor Centre

In November, the Holocaust Educational Trust invited a small group of London Ambassadors to visit the Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivor Centre in Hendon. They found the meeting with the Holocaust survivors very powerful, especially hearing from those who were children and teenagers during the Holocaust.

Julia Nyako from Copthall School in Barnet said, ‘I was particularly moved by the story of Eva Kugler, who originated from Germany but was taken to France to a Jewish orphanage with her sister. Both of them were lucky enough to obtain visas to America. I felt very emotional as Eva talked about how she was not supposed to have gone to America but had taken the place of a sick child. She told me of the guilt she had felt for many years about taking another child’s place’.

As a result of visiting the centre, the Ambassadors have been thinking more about the legacy of the Holocaust. Naomi Lyne from Ashmole School in Barnet said ‘After the war, it was very difficult for the survivors to adjust to "normal" life.  It reinforced again in me the fact that the Holocaust happened to people like me, with families, hopes, dreams and fears’.

It also helped them think more broadly about the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day ‘Speak Up, Speak Out’. Tasha O’ Leary, also from Ashmole School, said, ‘Many of those who survived the Holocaust are brave enough to regularly speak out about their experiences so that my generation might learn the lessons from history. Equally I was humbled to meet some survivors who had lost so much that they had not spoken in public. All their energy had gone into earning a living, adjusting to life in a new country and raising a family’.
 

Some Ambassadors are keen to visit the Holocaust Survivor Centre again and take some of their friends from school with them. It has reinforced in them a determination to ensure that people really understand about the Holocaust and learn the lessons.

If you are interested in finding out how you can continue to work with the Trust as an Ambassador, please click here.