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Wednesday 14 January 2015

Londoners set to remember Holocaust victims 70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz

Tribute: David Cameron visited the Birkenau extermination camp in December (Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Thousands of Londoners are set to attend a commemorative event to remember the millions killed in the Holocaust.

In central London, politicians, dignitaries and religious leaders will join survivors for Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27, exactly 70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Among the performers at the event, organised by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, will be cellist, singer and conductor Simon Wallfisch, grandson of 89-year-old Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a surviving member of the Women's Orchestra in Auschwitz.

The trust expects there to be more than 2,400 events across the UK at community centres, schools, libraries, museums, arts venues, prisons, railway stations and places of worship.

Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: "It is vital that we all remember and reflect upon the horrors of the past, and honour those who survived. On Holocaust Memorial Day we remember for a purpose: we learn from the past and consider how we can help build a better future."

In the lead-up to the memorial day, new works such as poems, sculptures, illustrations and collages by seven British artists and writers including Stephen Fry will also be unveiled as part of the trust's Memory Makers initiative. 

Survivors will also feature in six Moving Portraits, a collection of images which will be projected on to the Royal Festival Hall at Southbank Centre and shown on big screens across the UK on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Trust chair Cathy Ashley added: "By hearing, seeing and sharing these powerful stories and memories, we are challenged to confront all forms of hatred and discrimination wherever we see them."

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