The Bishop of Lichfield, Rt Rev Dr Michael Ipgrave, has led a group including school pupils on a visit to the National Holocaust Centre ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day this Sunday, January 27.
The centre, near Nottingham, is the UK's only dedicated Holocaust museum. It opened in 1995 to remember the 6 million Jews and millions of other victims of the Nazi regime.
Ipgrave joined the diocesan book club at the centre whose members were discussing their latest read, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters And Papers From Prison, while they were there.
Three students from Lichfield Cathedral School – Tom Dickinson, Mali Lewelyn-Cook and Josh Rooke – also took part in the trip where they listened to and met Holocaust survivor Edith Kurcz Jayne, whose family fled for their lives from Vienna in 1938, relocating to Lisbon and later the US.
Josh said: 'The Museum gave us a real insight into the atrocities which befell the Jewish people in the Second World War. I was overwhelmed at the horrific events and suffering, which will resonate with me emotionally for a long time.'
Ipgrave, who is chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, added: 'It was sobering to go with a group from the diocese to learn more about how such a horrendous and calculated series of events destroyed the lives of so many ordinary, innocent people. But it was also wonderful to hear stories of hope and life, like Edith's, and to witness dozens of primary school children, who were also visiting, show such an interest through their honest questions to her.'
Displays also highlighted the 10,000 refugee children who were sent to Britain to escape the Holocaust via the Kindertransport from 1938.
The centre was the brainchild of brothers James and Stephen Smith following a visit with their mother Marina to Israel's national Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, in 1991. It has a memorial garden and two permanent exhibitions, one on the history of the Holocaust and another tactile journey – aimed at younger children – which travels through a boy's personal experience of the atrocities in World War Two.
