The testimonies of Holocaust survivors living in the North-West of England will “live on forever”, thanks to a grant of almost a quarter of a million pounds.

The Fed’s My Voice education programme, which records and publishes for posterity life stories of survivors and refugees, has received over £246,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The charity has already published 35 books telling the first-person life stories of survivors, with a further ten planned.

The grant will allow My Voice to increase its focus on education, offering in-person storytelling from survivors, putting their stories online and creating student “guardians”, who will each be responsible for preserving and sharing the story of an individual survivor.

The funding will also allow for the recruitment of a new heritage and learning officer, who will support survivors as they tell their stories.

Raphi Bloom of The Fed told the JC: “As time moves on, the books we produce contain crucial eyewitness testimony. We are absolutely committed that they shouldn’t sit on bookshelves and gather dust.

“The lessons that [they] teach about tolerance, resilience and hope are more crucial than ever.”

A select number of schools will have the opportunity of becoming “Beacon Schools”, responsible for sharing their ideas for Holocaust education with other schools, with “far less emphasis on statistics and more on personal storytelling”, said Bloom.

The Greater Manchester-based organisation, the city’s largest Jewish social care charity, has run My Voice programme for five years.

The project has drawn the praise of prominent Holocaust educators, including the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, who has said: “It is imperative that we do everything in our power to protect the legacies of Holocaust survivors.”

According to Juliette Pearce, the manager of My Voice, the funding “will move the focus from the ungraspable statistic of six million deaths to personal local stories that enable students to conceptualise what it means to be caught up in the Holocaust.”

It will “ensure that their remarkable life stories will live on forever and [act] as a powerful counterweight to the body of material that seeks to deny or distort the truth about the Holocaust”, she said.

As a social care charity, The Fed provides “wrap-around support” for survivors telling their stories, which might be the first time they have spoken about the trauma they endured, said Bloom.

In a joint project with Yad Vashem UK, My Voice is planning to expand the programme to include London-based survivors wishing to record their life stories. Survivors can reach out to the charity to arrange this.

In June 2021, My Voice was awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, the highest possible accolade for a voluntary sector group.