Holocaust Memorial Day events to be held at Bolton Library

Bolton Town Hall will be lit up in purple on Saturday, January 27, marking the date that Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated in Nazi occupied Poland in 1945.

There will also be two events held at Bolton Central Library, including a photographic exhibition by Bolton Unison member Cat Woodall-Crook.

She said: “Nothing can prepare you for visiting Auschwitz now, 79 years after liberation.

“It’s important to remember that the holocaust didn’t happen overnight, it started gradually through the promotion of hatred through publishing lies about Jews, gypsies, gay people, disabled people, anyone who didn’t fit in with Nazi ideas of an Aryan master race.

More than one million people, most of them Jewish, died at Auschwitz concentration camp (Image: Bolton Unison)

“This is why it’s so crucial for all of us to speak up against intolerance and injustice.”

More than six million Jewish people from all over Europe were killed in concentration camps during the Holocaust, one million of them at Auschwitz alone.

Cat Woodall-Crook (Image: Cat Woodall-Crook)

The event also commemorates victims of more recent genocides, with this year marking the 30th anniversary of the events in Rwanda in 1994 when 800,000 mostly Tutsi people were killed.

The first of the two Holocaust Memorial Day events will be Ms Woodall-Crook’s Learning from History photography exhibition, which will run at the library from January 24 to February 4.

One of Ms Woodall-Crook's photographs (Image: Cat Woodall-Crook)

Ms Woodall-Crook took the photographs while on a Holocaust Study Tour to Poland in March 2023 organised by her union.

Another event, a presentation on “the amazing survival of Ziggy Landschaft” will take place at the library on Friday January 26 at 1pm.

Leah Burman (Image: Public)

The presentation will be delivered by Leah Burman of the Northern Holocaust Education Group, about the experiences of her father, Ziggy Landschaft in Poland during the Second World War.

Born to a Jewish family in Chorzow, near Cracow in Poland in 1925 Mr Landschaft was the only member of his immediate family to survive the Nazi occupation.

He has always remained positive, and his motto has been Le Chayim, a Jewish toast meaning “To Life.”

Ms Burman said: “This year's Holocaust Memorial Day theme is ‘The Fragility of Freedom.’ 

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“It's a fantastic opportunity to talk about the miraculous survival of my father Ziggy, who lived a free life to the age of 14, but then was incarcerated in a ghetto, three concentration camps and forced on to a death march. 

“He was amazingly saved by Czech, non-Jewish prisoners of war.

“Through sharing personal experiences of the Holocaust like those of my father, and others, the Northern Holocaust Education Group, hopes to inspire people to stand up against hatred, discrimination and persecution of any kind.”

The presentation is free and there is no need to book.