24 May 2010 - Nottingham residents Lisa Vincent and Bob Norton, who escaped to the UK from Nazi territories in 1939, today met and shared their experiences with the Rt Revd Paul Butler, the new Bishop of Southwell & Nottingham, when he visited the UK Holocaust Centre in Laxton, Notts.
The Bishop’s visit comes at the start of The Holocaust Centre’s 2010 season of weekend survivor talks, taking place around 1.00pm every Sunday from now to 15th August.
“It’s been an extraordinary, moving experience,” commented Bishop Paul. “It’s very emotional actually to meet and to listen to survivors, and even looking at the story of the Holocaust very quickly in the exhibition you remember how important it is to learn the story, to be reminded of it, and then to reflect on what the lessons are that we learn for today. It’s actually a real privilege to have a place like this in a diocese where I am responsible.”
During his visit, Bishop Paul met students from Southwold Primary School, Nottingham, on their tour of ‘The Journey’, the Centre’s award-winning exhibition for young people, which follows the journeys of Jewish children who lived through the Holocaust and survived. Testimony from both Lisa Vincent and Bob Norton is featured in the exhibition, which majors on the experience of the ‘Kindertransport’ – the ten thousand Jewish children allowed into Britain from Germany and Nazi-occupied territories without their parents just ahead of the outbreak of World War II.
The Bishop also met students from Belper School, Derbyshire, and Minsthorpe Community College, West Yorkshire, who visited the Centre today.
He was welcomed to the Centre by Co-founder Marina Smith, Director Helen Whitney, and Dr James Smith, who is both Chairman of The Holocaust Centre and CEO of the Aegis Trust, the international genocide prevention organization which developed from its work in 2000.
“It was a pleasure to welcome the new Bishop to The Holocaust Centre, and we’re delighted that he was able to meet some of our remarkable survivor speakers,” says Dr Smith. “We hope that others across the region will follow in his footsteps this summer and take the historic opportunity to meet and listen to people who survived and escaped the Nazi Holocaust. They will sadly not be with us forever, but their first-hand testimony offers irreplaceable insights into a past that continues to hold urgent lessons for today.”
Rwanda connection
The Holocaust Centre provided the model for the Kigali Genocide Memorial, established by the Aegis Trust in 2004 at a site in the centre of Rwanda’s capital where over 250,000 victims of the 1994 genocide are buried. Like The Holocaust Centre, it is a place both of remembrance for survivors and education for a new generation.
Bishop Paul has close ties to Rwanda, having visited the country every year since 1997, and he has visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial. “Post-Holocaust, one of the great cries was ‘Never Again’ – and the sad fact is, that proved not to be true,” he says. “The cry in Rwanda is ‘Never Again’ – to be heard not just for Rwanda but for the World. We have to learn the lessons; the darker side of being human, as well as the lighter side of being human. Places like this centre in Kigali are vital for helping us learn those lessons.”
The Bishop was accompanied on his visit to The Holocaust Centre by his chaplain the Revd Tony Evans, and by the Revd Chris Levy, Vicar of Egmanton & Walesby, Rector of Kirton and Priest-in-Charge of Kneesall, with Laxton and Wellow.
