Involvement in the Manchester HMD commemorations helped the city’s gay and lesbian Jews bridge the “chasm” with the rest of the Jewish community.

They marked HMD with a film event under the banner of Keshet, a local Jewish support organisation.

“It is a really important day in both the gay and Jewish calendars as it is the day where we remember atrocities done to both groups from the same source,” organiser Suzy Schneider pointed out.

Held at the Lesbian and Gay Foundation in central Manchester on Sunday, it featured a documentary about Gad Beck — a gay German Jew who led an underground resistance group in Berlin — followed by a discussion.

Elsewhere in the city, Primo Levi’s biographer Carole Angier spoke at the Imperial War Museum North and survivor Yisrael Abeles gave a talk to over 100 non-Jewish pupils at Manchester Jewish Museum.

At Didsbury Library, Gisela Knepel recounted her “nightmare” voyage to Cuba to escape the Nazis.
Civic ceremonies were held in Salford, Bury, Radcliffe, Trafford, Rochdale, Wigan and Blackburn.