Community leaders and members of the community gathered on the morning of Friday, January 27 in honour of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The theme of this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day was focussing on the stories of ordinary people, and three members of the Salisbury community shared their ordinary families’ experiences and the way their lives were affected by the Holocaust.

Irene Kohler, who has lived in Salisbury since 2006, shared her experience of growing up in London and Coventry when many people’s understanding and awareness of Jews was limited.

Her grandparents survived four years at Theresienstadt, while her uncle died at the hands of the Nazis. Her father lived with the guilt for the rest of his life.

Irene recalled hearing her father say during his final years: “’If only I had tried harder to persuade my brother to come with me.’”

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Wilton councillor Alexandra Boyd did not learn of her mother’s Jewish heritage until she was an adult when doctors informed her that the gene which led to her mother’s and grandmother’s early deaths from cancer was carried exclusively along maternal Ashkenazi Jewish lines.

When Alexandra asked her aunt about the family’s Jewish background, she was told: “We don’t talk about it. Don’t ask questions. We promised.”

This led Alexandra down a path where she discovered that upon her grandfather, a member of the Luftwaffe, falling in love with her grandmother, he refused to give her up despite her Jewishness, so the family was forced to fabricate false documents for her that allowed her to leave Germany with her new Gentile husband.

Her entire identity was changed and she kept her Jewish background a secret for the rest of her life out of fear of the anti-Semitic persecution she had seen.

Alexandra said: “She was never allowed to show who she really was- Jewish.”

Alexandra converted to Judaism, which worried her aunt, but Alexandra considered important so she could renew and preserve the family’s Jewish heritage for her children.

The event also commemorated victims of more recent genocides, including the Rwandan genocide, the Cambodian genocide by the Khmer Rouge and the 1995 Bosnian genocide in Srebrenica.

The event concluded with the Rt Revd Bishop Andrew Rumsey of Ramsbury lighting a candle on behalf of those present and everyone invited to sign a memorial book.