As the UK comes together on Friday 27 January for Holocaust Memorial Day 2023, residents in Ealing are being invited to join local dignitaries and faith leaders including Rabbi Hershi Vogel at Walpole Park to take part in a remembrance event.
The theme for the day is Ordinary People, remembering the millions of people who suffered or died during the Holocaust.
27 January marks the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.
The public are asked to gather at 10.45am for an 11am start at the Mattock Lane entrance to Walpole Park by the black gates. The morning will include a reading of the Holocaust Memorial Day pledges along with prayers and readings.
A memorial stone will also be unveiled with an inscription that reads: “These trees were planted to remember the millions of people murdered in the Holocaust during Nazi persecution, and in the genocides which followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. ‘Is the tree of the field a man’ – Deuteronomy ch. 20, v. 19.”
The event will be led by the Mayor of Ealing, Councillor Mohinder Midha, and will include an address by the leader of the council, Councillor Peter Mason. The King’s local representative, Deputy Lieutenant Richard Kornicki, will also attend.
Members of the local Jewish community including Rabbi Hershi Vogel from Ealing Synagogue will address the gathering, and students from Ealing Fields, Drayton Manor and Elthorne Park high schools will also be present.
At 2pm at Ealing Central Library borough archivist Dr Jonathan Oates will talk about the local responses to the Holocaust. There has been an Orthodox synagogue, Ealing United, in the borough since 1919 and which moved to its current location in Grange Road in 1923. A Liberal synagogue was established in 1943 and is currently located in Drayton Green.
Councillor Mason said: “I’d like to personally invite every member of the Ealing community – regardless of faith – to join us at these remembrance events, to commemorate what was lost. The fundamental principle of Holocaust Memorial Day is to reflect, and collectively recommit to combatting violence and hatred in all its forms.”
