Nation's focus on Liverpool as Holocaust Day is marked

Jan 28 2008 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL’S Capital of Culture events took a poignant turn yesterday as the city marked National Holocaust Memorial Day with a cast of speakers ranging from refugees of genocide to the Prime Minister, the Chief Rabbi and Archbishop of Canterbury.

A special two-hour event took place inside and outside the Philharmonic Hall involving more than 200 local performers, including a homecoming for Liverpool-born Hollywood actor Jason Isaacs.

In front of an audience comprising Merseyside Police Chief Constable Bernard Hogan-Howe; the Right Rev Bishop James Jones; Julia Baird, sister of John Lennon; Ron Prosor, ambassador of the State of Israel, city council leader Cllr Warren Bradley; Lord Mayor of Liverpool Cllr Paul Clark, and members of the Jewish community, the performance embodied the themes of this year’s memorial day: Remember, Reflect, React.

In the first section of the performance, Isaacs and Eithne Brown read letters as the parents of Liverpool resident Kay Fyne – also on stage, who recalled her memories of coming to Britain on the Kindertransport as a child never to see her parents again.

The Royal Liverpool Philhar-monic Orchestra played music from composers who were themselves victims of the Holocaust, including Hans Gal and Hans Krasa.

Rev Leslie Hardman, the Jew-ish chaplain who participated in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and led the first Jewish services there, spoke of his experiences conducting the burials of more than 50,000 victims there.

As the orchestra played, harrowing images of Jewish oppression and life in the concentration camps were projected above.

The second part was based on the theme Reflect.

Speaker Martin Bell, the ex-MP and journalist, said: “I was in a small way a witness of genocide, and from what I’ve seen and where I’ve been I’ve learned that good things happen because people make them happen, and bad things happen because people let them happen. We cannot afford a future like our past.”

Through music and dance, the stories of some of the shining lights of humanity in the Balkan conflict in Sarajevo were remembered.

In the third part, React, an original play from local writer Brian Abbott incorporated the story of Johnny Delaney, the 15-year-old traveller murdered in Ellesmere Port in 2003. Then its cast and audience were invited out on to Hope Street – closed to all traffic – to sign an artwork in the road to pledge to the seven Stockholm Commitments against racism and genocide.

Earlier, speeches and messages from Britain’s spiritual and political leaders included a filmed contribution from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, introduced by secretary of state Hazel Blears, in which he said the day was “of the greatest importance” to the country.

Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks took to the stage alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

Rabbi Sacks said: “Yes, there was a place and a time when it was a crime to be a Jew. We were vermin. We were lice. We had to be killed if Europe was to be pure. And if my parents had not come here, they would have been killed and I would never have been born.”

Dr Williams added: “May we never forget that people who are not like us are still people like us.”

Testimonials from members of the Roma, disabled, refugee and homosexual communities all spoke of Liverpool as their “safe haven” and their hopes for an end to genocide.

JOHN JAL WANG, a refugee from south Sudan, asked the audience to write to the president of his country to demand an immediate end to the conflict in Sudan.

“You can help,” he said, indicating that officials there listened when British people appealed for the freedom of Liverpool schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons, who was imprisoned in Sudan last November for naming a teddy bear Mohammed.

Adding a personal note, actor Jason Isaacs described himself as “proud to be a fourth generation Liverpudlian and a 230th generation Jew”, telling how his great grandparents came to the city from Eastern Europe.

Then the cast lit candles of remembrance and invited the audience to take a candle home and light it as a pledge to act against racism and genocide.

Speaking after the event, Mr Isaacs, known for his role in the Harry Potter films, and who just lost out on winning a Golden Globe, told the Daily Post: “I thought the event was magnificent.

“I have been around the city today with my mother and seen some of the places from my childhood that I remember and she has been pointing out what’s changed. I grew up in the community here, because my great-grandparents were allowed to land here and Liverpool is a very welcoming city.

“I just wanted to feel part of it, I didn’t want to be reporting on it, so I had to dig inside myself to find that.

“I instantly said ‘yes’ to do this, and that is why I got on the first plane from America, came straight here and haven’t slept for three days, because I felt how important this is.”

Creative director of the Culture Company, Phil Redmond said: “It’s very moving, and after two hours sitting in there it really hits home.

“I think what was reflected, with speaker after speaker, was the history of people coming and being taken in by Liverpool. It reminded me this is a city that always has its arms open.”

Artistic director Philip Parr said: “I think there was so much material in this, so many real people . . . an event, a performance that enlisted the talents of the people of Liverpool.

“I’m just very, very happy.”

Holocaust Memorial Day is dedicated to the 11m victims of the Holocaust and has been marked in the UK since 2001.

It is held on the anniversary of the liberation of the concen-tration camp at Auschwitz.

REVIEW – CULTURE DIARY: P18

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