Introducing our speakers for Bristol Holocaust Memorial Day 2020

We are pleased to welcome Dame Helen Hyde, Annick Lever, Lord Mayor Jos Clark, and sixth form students from Bristol to speak at this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration on Monday 27 January 2020.

Dame Helen Hyde

Dame Helen Hyde grew up in Apartheid South Africa and became an award-winning head teacher in the UK, where she spent 29 years as the Headmistress of Watford Grammar School for Girls.

In 2007 she obtained a Fellowship in Holocaust Studies from the Imperial War Museum, and in 2013 she was made a DBE for services to national education and Holocaust education.

She is a trustee of the Holocaust Education Trust, the Anne Frank Trust, and the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, and a Patron of the Rwandan Sisterhood, working with survivors of the Rwandan genocide. She is co-director of Refugees to Recovery, in Watford.

Members of Bristol HMD Steering Group were lucky enough to see Dame Helen Hyde speak at the Ammerdown Centre in 2019, and we cannot wait to bring her to a Bristol audience.

For more on Dame Helen Hyde, visit her website.

Annick Lever

Born in France in 1943 to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, Annick Lever was only a child when she faced Nazi persecution.

Annick and her Jewish relatives were arrested, but she was smuggled out of the prison before inmates were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. She was then raised Catholic by a French family.

Annick rediscovered her Jewish roots as a teenager and went on to settle in England, where she was an au-pair for a Jewish family in Bristol. She later married and now lives in Surrey.

We are very privileged to have Annick speak at Bristol HMD 2020 and share her experiences with us. She has previously spoken at HMD events organised by Sutton Grammar School, The League of Jewish Women, and North West Surrey Synagogue.

Annick’s story is included in the book Women’s Experiences in the Holocaust: In Their Own Words, by Agnes Grunwald-Spier.

Other speakers at Bristol Holocaust Memorial Day 2020

We will also hear from sixth form students at Cotham School, St. Brendan’s Sixth Form College and St. Mary Redcliffe, who will reflect on their visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former concentration camp and death camp in Poland, where 1.1 million people were killed. The three schools took part in the Lessons From Auschwitz programme, organised by the Holocaust Education Trust.

Jos Clark, the Lord Mayor of Bristol, will also speak at Bristol Holocaust Memorial Day 2020. She has a Masters degree in social work from the University of Bristol, and was elected as Lord Mayor in May 2019.

We hope to see you at Bristol Holocaust Memorial Day 2020, from 1:30pm-4:45pm on Monday 27 January at City Hall, College Green.