Holocaust Memorial Day 2026: Bridging the Generations

The Lord Mayor will open this year’s civic remembrance event, which will include a keynote speech by Tracy Craggs from Holocaust Centre North. Tracy has been working with the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association for 18 years, latterly as Head of Collections for its Holocaust Centre North based at the University of Huddersfield, where she is responsible for working with survivors and their families in securing their wonderful collections for the future. She is also fortunate to have a dual role, looking after the needs of survivors based in Yorkshire.

There will be a multimedia (photography, video, sound and spoken word) performance of Sight by artist Laura Fisher, focusing on experiences by Holocaust survivor Iby Knill. The artist retraced Iby’s journey across the no man’s land between Czechoslovakia and Hungary in February 1942. This attempt to retrace Iby’s path of survival echoes a similar journey Iby’s son Chris Knill made to Auschwitz-Birkenau in an attempt to understand the places that witnessed pivotal parts of his mother’s life.

Music will be performed by the United Hebrew Congregation choir with Rabbi Alby Chait MBE.

The event will include a reading of the seven statements of commitments with candles lit by representatives of the different groups persecuted in the Holocaust, by German Nazi persecution and in the subsequent genocides which followed. A memorial prayer will be sung by Rabbi Anthony Gilbert to close the event.