WIN Commemorates Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 in Waltham Forest
The WIN team was honoured to be invited to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day at Waltham Forest Town Hall on 5th February. The event was organised by Waltham Forest Council in collaboration with Leytonstone and Wanstead Synagogue, The Association of Jewish Refugees and the National Holocaust Museum, and was well attended by community members from across the borough, including members of Waltham Forest WIN. We were profoundly moved by the testimony of Albert Lester who came to the UK on the Kindertransport aged only 11, having survived the brutal raid of his school on Kristallnacht. Many of us in the audience gasped as Albert pulled from his pocket the same pen-knife he had clutched in his pocket for comfort all those years ago in 1938, when the school he loved was destroyed and his teachers arrested, many of them never to return. In today’s climate of division and polarisation, we were struck by Mark Rusling’s comments, as he closed the event on behalf of the National Holocaust Museum, reminding us of the critical importance of fellowship.