Be the Light in the Darkness: York Holocaust Memorial Day

Event details

York Holocaust Memorial Day Civic Event Online

Join us as we commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day with a special online event featuring talks and short films reflecting on the 2021 national theme, ‘Be the light in the darkness’.

Keynote Speaker, Ariana Neumann

York is proud to be welcoming author, Ariana Neumann as our keynote speaker. Ariana will reflect on the creation of the remarkably moving memoir, When Time Stopped.

As a little girl, Ariana wanted to peer into the shadows and be a detective. This childish curiosity led her focus on the enigma of her father, who appeared to be the epitome of success and strength but who would wake in the night screaming in a language that she didn’t recognize.

Following his death in 2001, Ariana was left a box of papers, wartime documents that opened the door to her father’s past and lead Ariana to begin uncovering of the astonishing truth of her father’s extraordinary escape from Nazi-occupied Prague and seemingly inevitable deportation to the camps.

Ariana's book is available, with signed bookplates, from our friends at Fox Lane Books. 

“There is a Czech saying – The darkest shadow is beneath the candle.”

Hosted by the Lord Mayor of York Cllr Janet Looker and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of York Professor Charlie Jeffery, the York Holocaust Memorial Day Civic Event Online will also feature short talks by the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell and Student Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber, as well as two short films.

This event will reflect on the depths that humanity can sink to, alongside ways in which individuals and communities have resisted that darkness to be the light before, during and after genocide and persecution. We can all stand in solidarity. We can choose to be the light in the darkness in many ways and places – at home, in public, and online.

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