Neil Parish, MP for Tiverton and Honiton, attended the launch of the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2015 at a reception held in Parliament on the 7th April. Also in attendance were MPs, genocide survivors and dignitaries. The event took place at a particularly poignant day as it marked the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Genocide in Rwanda.

Announcing the theme Keep the memory alive was Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) Chief Executive Olivia Marks-Woldman explained how it will be the thread that pulls together activities organised to commemorate the next Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January 2015.

Given that next year marks not only the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp, but also the 20th anniversary of the Genocide in Srebrenica, it is important that memory is at the heart of the 2015 commemoration.

At the reception Neil Parish met with Iby Knill, a Jewish holocaust survivor who fled her native Czechoslovakia and fought with the Hungarian resistance before being captured and taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. 

Neil also heard Safet Vukali’s story. Safet is a survivor of the Bosnian Genocide of the earlier 1990s and was held at the concentration camp in Keraterm when he was only 16. He and his family were forced to leave the country.

Neil Parish MP visited Srebrenica as an MEP, the site of the worst massacre during the Bosnian Genocide where 8,000 Bosniaks murdered by Serbian Militiamen and Republika Srpska troops. Neil has also recently visited the Nazi concentration and death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau with students from across the South West.

For more information on Safet Vukali’s and Iby Knill’s story visit the HMDT website:

http://www.hmd.org.uk/resources/stories/iby-knill-hidden-histories

http://hmd.org.uk/resources/stories/hmd-2015-safet-vukali%C4%87