Hackney commemorates Holocaust Memorial Day

Holocaust survivor: Solly Irving, second from left, at Hackney Council’s Holocaust Memorial Day Ceremony. Photograph: Hackney Citizen

“Try to stay alive,” Solly Irving’s father told his nine year-old son as he helped him flee occupied Poland, “someone from our family must try to stay alive to tell what happened to us.”

Solly Irving, now a stout, smiling Jewish man in his 80s, did escape with his life.

And today, Holocaust Memorial Day, to an audience at Hackney Town Hall, he recounted what happened to him during the Second World War.

Having bid farewell to his father, Solly Irving spent the next period of his childhood on the run from the Nazis, hiding in farms and woods and grabbing anything to eat when he could.

In May 1945 he was finally liberated by the Russians from Theresienstadt Camp, Czechoslovakia.

At 14 years old he was brought to the UK and he eventually settled in Hackney.

Holocaust Memorial Day is a national commemoration day in the United Kingdom dedicated to the remembrance of those who suffered in The Holocaust, and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

At today’s event to mark the the day, songs were performed by children from Simon Marks Jewish Primary School and readings delivered by pupils from Urswick and Haggerston schools.

Mayor Jules Pipe read a statement of commitment along with other councillors and school students.

Councillor Harvey Odze told the Hackney Citizen: “People from every section of the community are here today which is very good to see.”

“This Holocaust Memory Day to me is an opportunity to look back on the past and learn how to prevent it from happening again.”

A film commissioned by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust was shown, featuring survivor Susan Pollack telling a story of genocide survival – with a twist at the end.

Watch the video below: