(From left to right) Kim McGuiness, Karen Kilgour, General Robin Brim - Deputy Lord Lieutenant CB, CBE, DSO, Debra Brunner, Richard Baker and Rabbi Aaron Lipsey
Holocaust Memorial Day
‘the Fragility of Freedom’
This year, Holocaust Memorial Day at The Together Plan was a marathon across weeks. For a small charity with one full time employee – we really did deliver in the south and the north of the country and were extremely proud of what we were able to achieve.
In the week running up to Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27th), our Making History Together travelling exhibition was installed at Yavneh College in Borehamwood, just outside of north London. We provided the school with a set of workshops and activities to accompany the exhibition for the whole school to do during the week and received incredibly positive feedback from the teaching staff. Over 500 students interacted with the exhibition over the course of the week. During the week running up to Holocaust Memorial Day, it was also Tu bishvat (the birthday of the trees). Using our workshop and our film of Leonid Simonovsky, Holocaust survivor from Mogilev, the children grew a ‘tree of kindness’. As an 8 year old boy, Leonid was told to run and hide in the Belarusian forest by his mother knowing that they were all going to be killed by the Nazis. Leonid’s mother told him to run away and never come back. Leonid spent years hiding in the forest. Today he is in his eighties, an artist living in St Petersburg. He only paints nature and trees – the very thing that saved him and protected him during those terrible years of pain and loss as a small child. His art can be found here.
Tree of Kindness at Yavneh College
The travelling exhibition was then relocated to Bushey United Synagogue in Hertfordshire, for Holocaust Memorial Day where The Together Plan’s CEO, Debra Brunner, gave a compelling talk to members of the community about the importance of Jewish Belarus, its 700 year story and the 800,000 Jews who were murdered there between 1941 and 1944.
The following day, the Making History Together exhibition was transported to Newcastle where it was installed in Bewick Hall, Newcastle City Library as part of Newcastle City Council’s Holocaust Memorial Day programme. In the run up to the exhibition’s arrival, Debra Brunner was interviewed by BBC Radio Newcastle – which can be listened to here.
Between January 29th and February 2nd we ran a number of events including a workshop with students from Marden Bridge School, an event with Roma Access Newcastle and a film screening of ‘The Rescuers, Heroes of the Holocaust” by Emmy Award winning film Director Michael King. We organised a special commemorative event with guest speakers; Rabbi Aaron Lipsey, United Hebrew Congregation, Chair Newcastle Council of Faiths. Deputy Lieutenant, Lt. General Robin Brims, CB, CBE, DSO, Tyne & Wear Lieutenancy, Catherine McKinnell, Member of Parliament for Newcastle North, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism (by video link from Westminster), Kim McGuinness, Police and Crime Commissioner, Northumbria Police Authority, Debra Brunner of The Together Plan and Richard Baker from The Together Plan’s Newcastle Committee with closing remarks from Karen Kilgour, Deputy Leader of Newcastle City Council.
(From left to right) Kim McGuiness, Karen Kilgour, General Robin Brim – Deputy Lord Lieutenant CB, CBE, DSO, Debra Brunner, Richard Baker and Rabbi Aaron Lipsey
Making History Together at Bewick Hall, Newcastle City Library
There were close to 60 people in attendance at the special commemorative event and the feedback was immensely positive. Several people who attended had Jewish ancestry in Belarus and made a point of acknowledging how much they appreciated the work we are doing.
Debra Brunner runs a Making History Together workshop for students from Marden Bridge School
The testimonials we received from the teachers from Marden Bridge who attended the school workshop were:
‘An amazing workshop which links perfectly to our work on ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. Informative, intelligent and empathetic. The children were filled with a sense of humanity and history.
Marie Jackson
Marden Bridge Middle School
‘A genuinely fascinating look into the hidden experiences of Belarusian Jews. Wonderfully told and presented. A moving experience.’
Sean McGregor
This was the first time that the exhibition had been taken to the north of England and we were extremely grateful to Newcastle City Council for the opportunity to be part of their 2024 Holocaust Memorial Day programme.
As a result of the event, The Together Plan now has a committee in Newcastle (Richard Baker, Sally Young, Paul Miller and Mary Shaw) and we are incredibly grateful for all their efforts to make the week such a great success and to Paul Miller for the sponsorship from Racquets Court. The programme was a catalyst which has sparked a lot of discussion around potential new projects which would yield some exciting opportunities.
This was by far, the busiest Holocaust Memorial Day (two weeks) that we have ever experienced as a charity, with so much demand for our resources and materials and we are delighted that we received so much positive feedback across the two weeks and from different spectrums of the community across the country. One lady who attended our events and the exhibition said that the past two days for her had been the most informative days she had had and she was incredibly grateful.
We are very proud of our programme and our exhibition as we can see that people find it easy to use, it is accessible and interactive which people are enjoying, and it is giving a whole new perspective to help understand the enormity of the Holocaust and the lessons to be learned.
For more information about the Making History Together programme – click here
For more information about the Making History Together exhibition – click here