Jersey To Honour Victims Of Holocaust

Sunday, 27 January 2019 08:28

Jersey will today be remembering the 21 islanders who lost their lives under the Nazi regime.

Holocaust Memorial Day will be marked with a ceremony in the Occupation Tapestry Gallery of the Maritime Museum.

There'll be guest speakers, readings, an address from the Bailiff and Dean of Jersey, before wreaths are laid at the Lighthouse Memorial.

Paula Thelwell from the Holocaust Memorial Day organising committee says its an important day in the Jersey calendar.

"Liberation Day is a day obviously for celebration and joy, but the Holocaust Memorial Day enables us to gather at the memorial to those islanders, focus on them and the wider events of the Holocaust and acts of genocide ever since."

The guest speaker at today's ceremony is a descendent of one of the 21 islanders who suffered in German camps and prisons during the occupation.

Screenwriter and actress Jenny Lecoat's great-aunt, Louisa Gould, was sent to a concentration camp for harbouring an escaped Russian slave worker. Mrs Gould died in the gas chambers of Ravensbrück in 1945, two months before the camp was liberated.

Anyone who wants to attend today's ceremony is asked to arrive no later than 11:30am.