Son of ‘Britain’s Schindler’ helps mark Holocaust Memorial Day on 80th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation

Hosted by the Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Abigail Marshall Katung, the fully booked event takes place at City Varieties at 2pm on Sunday 26 January, with the theme ‘For a Better Future’.

Above: Watch Nick Winton describe the role his father played in helping to save 669 children from Czechoslovakia.

Nick Winton, son of Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton MBE, will deliver this year’s keynote address detailing the role his father played in organising the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish refugee children from Czechoslovakia, whose families had fled persecution by Nazi Germany. Due to the similarities in helping those suffering under Nazi persecution, Sir Nicholas is often compared to the German industrialist, Oscar Schindler.

Sir Nicolas’s heroism on the eve of the Second World War went nearly unnoticed for half a century until the British television programme ‘That’s Life’ highlighted his achievements and reunited him with some of those he saved. A major film, ‘One Life’, starring Anthony Hopkins, was released in 2023 based on Sir Nicholas’s story.

The annual Holocaust Memorial Day event is part of a wider international day of remembrance. The day focuses on the six million Jewish men, women and children killed in the Holocaust, together with people from other minority groups that died through Nazi persecution. The day also remembers those people murdered in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. 

This year’s event has a special poignance in being the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp in Poland in January 1945 and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. To mark the anniversaries, The Opera North Youth Chorus, the junior performing wing at Opera North, has worked with writer Tom Hastings to create a piece that embodies this year’s theme using contemporary source material as the basis for this original writing. The music that accompanies the writing has all been selected from composers who lost their lives in the Auschwitz camps.

Concluding the proceedings will be a reading of the seven statements of commitments, with candles lit by representatives of the different groups persecuted in the Holocaust and in the subsequent genocides which followed. A memorial prayer will be sung to close the event.

The Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Abigail Marshall Katung, said: “It is a great honour to be hosting Leeds Holocaust Memorial Day as we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and welcome Nick Winton to Leeds.

“The story of Sir Nicolas Winton is an inspiration in how the selflessness of a single person can impact so many lives.

“As we remember the horrors of the Holocaust and the other genocides that have happened since, we learn why the virtues of peace and tolerance are so important.

“Through acts of remembrance and by educating ourselves on the consequences of hate, we learn to challenge intolerance in all its forms and to accept and celebrate our differences.”

Leader of Leeds City Council Councillor James Lewis said: “As a multicultural global city, we take the opportunity each year on Holocaust Memorial Day to remind ourselves of the consequences of hate, racism, and xenophobia of all kinds and to stand shoulder to shoulder as one community.

“Holocaust Memorial Day also plays an important role in reaffirming our commitment to stopping the inhumanity of genocide in the future and building bonds of trust between our many and varied communities here in Leeds.”

In addition to the main civic event, three further events will take place to mark the occasion.

On Thursday 23 January, at 7:30pm, the Howard Assembly Rooms will host ‘The Orchestras of Auschwitz’. This unique musical performance will feature long-forgotten musical compositions and arrangements composed by holocaust prisoners and rescued from obscurity, 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz.

Thursday 30 January, at 2pm, will see Otley Courthouse host a special matinee screening of the film, ‘The Zone of Interest’. The film, based on a Martin Amis novel, focuses on the life of German Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, who live with their family in a home in the ‘zone of interest’ next to the German concentration camp.

Also, on the 30 January, at 7pm Seven Artspace will host a screening of One Life, the Anthony Hopkins film based on the story of Sir Nicholas Winton MBE.

For those wanting to learn more about the Holocaust, Leeds Libraries have also curated a list of Holocaust Memorial Day-related books that can be accessed here: https://shorturl.at/JUCjw 

The Holocaust Memorial Day civic event is now fully booked. Tickets for the other events can be found at:

The Orchestra of Auschwitz: https://www.operanorth.co.uk/whats-on/the-orchestras-of-auschwitz/

One Life film showing: https://www.sevenleeds.co.uk/event/holocaust-memorial-day-one-life/

Zone of Interest: https://otleycourthouse.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/1173657602  

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