TWELVE years age Nigel Grizzard made a harrowing discovery.

He found out that five members of his family had died in the Holocaust. From a small village in Lithuania, they had been killed under the Nazi occupation.

“I did not know beforehand and neither did my parents. My cousin and I went to the village and talked to a young person who took us to an area outside the community where all the Jews had been murdered and buried in a mass grave. There are more than 100 people buried there.”

The village is called Zemel, where the dead are now commemorated. Nigel’s great grandparents, great aunt and two great uncles lie there.

Nigel is taking on role as the key speaker at an event in City Hall to mark Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) on Friday, the date marking the liberation in 1945 of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.

The day is a time for everyone to pause to remember the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

On HMD we can honour the survivors of these regimes and challenge ourselves to use the lessons of their experience to inform our lives today.

'How Can Life Go On?' is the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2017 and asks audiences to think about what happens after genocide and of our own responsibilities in the wake of such a crime.

A researcher and historian of Bradford’s Jewish community, Nigel aims to talk about his personal experiences and lessons for the future.

“There are a lot of young children so it has to be relevant to them. We have to talk about the future, how it affected so many people and how important it is to remember. The message for young people is that terrible things have happened in the past and it is our duty to avoid it happening in the future.”

He adds: “When you think of Srebrenica in Bosnia and of Syria, it is a great worry.”

With a decreasing number of Holocaust survivors still alive to speak about the atrocities, it is the role of people like Nigel to pass on information. “I am the guardian of the memory,” he says.

He points out the role of Bradford as a “city of refuge” to which people came before and after the Holocaust.

Representatives of different faiths will attend the event.

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) is the charity that promotes and supports Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), which has taken place in the UK since 2001, and is promoted and supported by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Presiding over the service, Diane Fairfax, of Undercliffe, also has family links to the Holocaust. Her father Richard Fairfax was a refugee who came to Bradford from the occupied German town of Breslau, now the Polish town of Wroclaw.

Aged 13, he was one of almost 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig, helped by the organised rescue effort known as Kindertransport during the nine months leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War.

Richard did not see his parents again - they were killed on the way to a concentration camp. “The camp was not finished so they were taken off trucks and shot,” says Diane.

“I think it is important that it is held here, in City Hall, in a city known for its tolerance, where people have sought refuge and made their homes.

Also taking part in the event - which is to be opened by the Lord Mayor Councillor Geoff Reid - are students from Beckfoot Upper Heaton Academy, St John’s Primary School Choir, violinists Mark Ostyn and James Uttley and Rudi Leavor of Bradford Synagogue. Bradford Council leader Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe will speak.

To mark HMD, Bradford’s Peace Museum, will be displaying suitcases and other mementoes linked to Kindertransport, until April 7.

Learning and administrative officer Shannen Leng said: “The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust does an amazing job to make sure that these stories are kept alive and it is important for us to tell them.”

Regional Ambassador for the Holocaust Educational Trust and Bradford University student Orianne Brown says: “The theme this year has huge importance, it is easy to think that after genocide, people are free and that their suffering is over but from my experience working with survivors of the Holocaust this is simply not the case.

“Even if people are able to get back to some sense of ‘normality’, nothing is ever normal again, many people cannot return home or have no place to call home, most have lost family and friends.”

The Holocaust Memorial Day event is being held in the Banqueting Suite at City Hall at 11am on Friday. Anyone can attend. To request a place, ring Anna Frater on 01274 431498 or email anna.frater@bradford.gov.uk; peacemuseum.org.uk.

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