Keeping with the 2023 HMD theme of ‘Ordinary People’, Sir Nicholas Winton was celebrated at AJR’s Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony, held on 23 January at Belsize Square Synagogue.
Guest speaker Lia Lesser, herself one of ‘Nicky’s children’ (the 669 mostly Jewish children rescued from Czechoslovakia) said, “I was one of the fortunate ones. Ordinary people arranged for me to leave Prague before the outbreak of war in 1939, and an ordinary person agreed to sponsor me, an eight-year-old child from another country who they didn’t know.”
Her Excellency the Czech Ambassador Maria Chatardová spoke about the importance of Holocaust commemoration and education, an opinion shared by Nicky Winton’s grandson Laurence, another of the guest speakers at this event.
Laurence Winton said, “I’ll leave it to you to decide if my grandfather was ordinary or extraordinary” and “My grandfather would have been very happy to bring entire families over to Britain, it was only the British government of the day who said ‘No, we will only accept children.’” Laurence also paid tribute to his mother, Barbara Winton, a fearless campaigner for the rights of todays’ refugees, who passed away in 2022.
Also in attendance were Lord Pickles, Tulip Siddiq MP, and representatives from the German and Austrian Embassies in London.
The commemoration service was preceded by a moving lecture about Slovak Survivors’ Testimony by Dr Bea Lewkowicz, Director of AJR Refugee Voices Archive, introduced by the Ambassador of Slovakia in the UK, His Excellency Robert Ondrejcsak. The Ambassador highlighted the importance of institutions such as the Sered Holocaust Museum, set on the site of the former concentration and transit camp, to promote education and national remembrance. Dr Lewkowicz’s lecture, ‘Ordinary People – Ordinary Heroes’ described the stories of four Jewish women survivors from Slovakia, Trude Silman and Sara-Kraus Lefkovitz from Bratislava, Prof. Gerta Vrbova from Trnava, and the speaker’s mother Dr. Gertrud Friedmann from Piestany.
You can watch the live recording of the service here.
Photos by Adam Soller Corporate Photography
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