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January 27th 2026, marks yet another painful anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. In commemoration of this profoundly significant moment in history – Holocaust Centre North will hold and host an evening of reflection on the day itself in keeping with this year’s international theme of Bridging Generations. This event and this anniversary are a call to action – a reminder that the responsibility of remembrance does not end with the survivors. Instead, it lives on through the second and third generation of survivors – from the children, the grandchildren and through a new fourth generation who can share memories through the work they do in Holocaust education and research.
Holocaust Centre North welcomes everyone to join them for their Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration on Tuesday 27 January at 6pm at their home at the University of Huddersfield. The centre will come together to explore the power of remembrance across generations, with intergenerational Holocaust Survivor conversations in person and stories from the Holocaust Centre North Archive.
The memorial event will include pre recorded video testimony from Holocaust Survivor Iby Knill, one of the Holocaust Centre North’s 16 survivors whose testimonies are foundational to its permanent Through Our Eyes Exhibition. This short film and interview between the Centre’s Head of Collections, Dr Tracy Craggs, Iby, her daughter Pauline, and son Chris, will be screened during the event and sheds light on the complexity of this history for the family and provides points of reflection for all - across intergenerational remembrance.
It took Iby many years to talk about her experiences in Nazi concentration camps, but when she eventually did, she wrote two books and talked tirelessly in schools about what happened to her. For her family their relationship to her history and this familial trauma was complex. Iby talks about the immense support and understanding she received from her husband Bert who understood when sometimes she needed space: “I found occasionally things just got too much for me and I’d just have to get away and just leave and I used to go to London and I used to just walk for days and it was the only way to cope." (Iby Knill)
Dr Elanor Stannage, Head of Communities at Holocaust Centre North says: “Iby’s son Chris describes how he 'grew up feeling there was a hole somewhere, not quite knowing why’. The Knill family show a remarkable generosity and courage in their willingness to share the depth and complexity of their unfathomable experience, as do all survivor families who are willing to share those experiences with a wider world. Perhaps, through their survival despite such horror, we can better understand the global trauma the Holocaust has wrought on humanity and our responsibilities within this post Holocaust world.”
At its Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration event, Holocaust Centre North will light candles to remember the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust and commemorate the millions more murdered through Nazi persecution including Roma and Sinti, LGBTQ+, disabled people and so many more. The Centre will also remember the victims of subsequent genocides and atrocities across the world.
The event will also feature community partners including Community Arts Organisation 6 Million +, pupils from Carlton Primary School and others that work tirelessly to promote unity, understanding and shared humanity. It will also consider another generation: those who work or commit their time to remember the victims of the Holocaust, to commemorate, to educate, to reach across the years to keep this history alive and work towards a world where every human life is valued equally.
Dr Alessandro Bucci, Director of Holocaust Centre North comments: "The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust theme Bridging Generations offers us as an organisation an opportunity to share some of these precious relationships with our collection donors and the insights they bring. We have the great privilege of connecting with whole families as we are gifted the honour of preserving these traces of their family’s lives, shaped by such cruelty and loss, within our collection. We have always seen how valuable intergenerational knowledge and memory is and our archive contains many multigenerational interviews. They are such an important historical resource as we understand the impacts of this history on future generations across the world."
Holocaust Centre North began as the Holocaust Survivors Friendship Association, a support organisation for Holocaust survivors to come together in the spirit of mutual support. The charity quickly developed a second objective: to share those lived experiences towards remembrance and Holocaust education and towards a less divided world that centres our shared humanity independent of race, religion or creed. Holocaust Centre North continues to hold these principles central to their work and in doing so, have developed an archive of collections of over 150 families who experienced persecution by the Nazi regime. The centre cares for these precious objects, traces of history, and the relationships with the families that have entrusted their histories to the Holocaust Centre North Archive care: histories of survival, bravery, resilience, rebuilding lives, but also devastating, incalculable loss, and horrors beyond our imagining.
Its permanent exhibition Through Our Eyes is built from the testimony of this vital community of Holocaust refugees and survivors who built new lives and families in the North of England. Through the years the centre has treasured these relationships with these wider families and sought to capture the nuances and legacies of the impacts of the Holocaust on first, second and third generations of survivors through intergenerational interviews and artworks created in response to these. Outside of its Holocaust Memorial event, audiences can engage with these through its online audio guides on Holocaust Centre North’s website. Researchers and educators can access these unique resources towards developing a greater understanding of the long-term impacts of the Shoah (Holocaust).
Tickets for Holocaust Centre North’s Holocaust Memorial Day at 6pm on Tuesday 27th January 2026 are free but must be reserved in advance. They are available to book via Holocaust Centre North Website HERE
Header image: A section of rail track heading into Auschwitz Concentration Camp
