Holocaust Memorial Day service to be broadcast online from Leeds Town Hall

The Holocaust Memorial Day service will be broadcast online from Leeds Town Hall this year.
The Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Eileen Taylor at last year's Holocaust Memorial Day event at Leeds Town Hall.The Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Eileen Taylor at last year's Holocaust Memorial Day event at Leeds Town Hall.
The Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Eileen Taylor at last year's Holocaust Memorial Day event at Leeds Town Hall.

This is due to national lockdown restrictions due to rising coronavirus rates across the country.

This international day of remembrance focuses on the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust, and millions more people killed under German Nazi persecution, and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

The theme this year is ‘Be the light in the darkness’.

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Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Eileen Taylor, will open the event.

She will then be followed by a keynote speech by Dr Alessandro Bucci, Co-director of the Holocaust Learning and Exhibition Centre, University of Huddersfield, and Ben Barkow, Chair of the Holocaust Survivors' Friendship Association.

A performance reading of WH Auden’s poem ‘Refugee Blues’ will also be shown.

It is part of a pre-recorded reading by young people from the Carriageworks Young Theatre Makers, Breeze Arts Foundation at Leeds Playhouse, Opera North Youth Chorus and Pyramid Arts.

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There will be also be a reading of the seven statements of commitments with candles lit by representatives of the different groups persecuted, including Holocaust survivors, people with additional needs, the LGBT+ community and Remembering Srebrenica.

A traditional Hebrew memorial prayer sung by the President of Bradford Synagogue, Rudi Leavor, BEM will bring this year’s event to a close, at which point there will be an invitation to light a candle at home.

The Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Eileen Taylor said: “Whilst we are unable to come together in person this year to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, I am honoured to be a part of this online event which gives the people of Leeds the chance to come together in remembrance of those who were murdered in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides.”

Councillor Judith Blake, leader of Leeds City Council said: “This year’s theme of ‘Be the light in the darkness’ is an affirmation and a call to action for everyone marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

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"The theme asks us to consider different kinds of ‘darkness’: identity-based persecution, misinformation, denial of justice. It then asks that we consider different ways of ‘being the light’, such as acts of solidarity, resistance, rescue and illuminating mistruths.”

The service will be shown online at 2pm on Sunday, January 24 on the Leeds Town Hall website: www.leedstownhall.co.uk

It will be British Sign Language (BSL) interpreted.

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