For this project, HMDT invited communities and schools across the UK to design and create 80 unique candleholders, honouring all the individuals and communities murdered and persecuted by the Nazis.
Two students chosen to showcase the project to the King, Amy, in Year 11, and Nadia, Year 8, from Cheney School in Oxford, told the JC the inspiration for their candles came from studying the life of Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a cellist who survived Auschwitz by joining the Women’s Orchestra.
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Amy’s candleholder incorporates musical notes, referencing Anita’s musicianship, and broken glass, symbolising her experience in Auschwitz. There are also human figures depicted, referencing the community and orchestra that Anita was a part of and through which “she and others were able to join together and share a common human experience and keep hope alive in order to survive, and that’s what we told His Majesty,” Amy said.
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Amy found the King to be “genuinely interested in what we had to say and he engaged with our project with interest. I think he really appreciates the importance of having a day dedicated to Holocaust memorial and projects, and how important it is to have ways to remember bad things that happen in the past so that they aren’t repeated.”
Nadia added that projects like the 80 Candles for 80 Years project are important ways to “immortalise” the Holocaust, so “even generations hundreds of years into the future will realise how significant [the Holocaust] is”, and through which they can learn about people “who are just like ourselves but born during a different time.”
The 80 candleholders will be showcased in a special digital exhibition on Holocaust Memorial Day and will also play a central role in local HMD events.
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HMDT Chief Executive Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE said it was “wonderful” to see students engage with the project “so thoughtfully” and that the level of engagement from participants has been “truly inspiring.”
The King also viewed Testimony 360: People and Places of the Holocaust, a new digital education programme in schools which uses AI-powered and virtual reality technology to allow students to ask Holocaust survivors questions and experience sites for themselves.
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The King said he was interested to see technology playing a key role in giving “a particularly good impression of the horror” of the camps.
Testing out the AI for himself, His Majesty asked the programme: “What is the message you really want to leave us all?”
The AI, which is based on testimony provided by Goldberg and uses his voice, responded, “I would like people to become and remain aware that indifference is a very dangerous response to injustice.”
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Goldberg had to sit and answer some 3,000 questions so that the AI learned enough about him to generate answers itself, Karen Pollock CBE, chief executive of the Holocaust Education Trust, told the King.
Speaking to the JC, Goldberg, said that the King told him he thought he was “extraordinary” for continuing to engage in Holocaust education and projects so actively. “He was very complimentary to me, and it was nice to hear it coming directly from His Majesty,” he said.
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He added that the King seems to “fully understand the colossal injustice and atrocity that was perpetrated against Jewish people during the Holocaust”, and he was pleased to that the King “seems to have made it an active component of his life to do what he can to ensure that people become aware.”
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The King also met student Natasha Kaplinsky, who shared with him about her work interviewing more than 100 survivors following former Prime Minister David Cameron’s Holocaust Commission.
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The event concluded with a performance from “Echo Eternal”, a commemorative arts and community engagement project led by CORE Education Trust in partnership with The National Youth Music Theatre, which invites schools and youth organisations to create artistic responses to the testimonies of British Holocaust survivors.
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His Majesty commented he “couldn’t get enough” of the choir and was “very impressed” with their “really good” voices. He thanked them for coming and joked that they can “blame me if they don’t pass their examinations”.
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Artistic portraits of Holocaust survivors, including the late Lily Ebert, were placed outside the Bow Room, where the event took place.
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