Cheshire East Council commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day

Cheshire East Council held a poignant service of remembrance to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day.

The hour-long ceremony in Crewe included readings of testaments from survivors of genocide, the lighting of memorial candles and a minute's silence.

This year marks the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex on 27th January 1945.

Mayor of Cheshire East Councillor David Edwardes led the service in the Council Chamber of Crewe Municipal Buildings on Tuesday 27 January 2026. 

Around 60 members of the public attended, including civic dignitaries representing communities from across the borough. Those attending included secondary school pupils from The Oaks Academy and Ruskin Community High School in Crewe, and Sandbach School. 

Cheshire East Council leader Councillor Nick Mannion and deputy leader Councillor Michael Gorman attended and give short addresses, including poignant personal testimony about the experiences of both their fathers who, as prisoners of war doing forced labour in Germany and Poland, witnessed the horrific reality of the Holocaust. 

The guest speaker was Hannah Goldstone, who told the compelling and tragic story of her extended family in Germany before and during the Second World War. Her grandfather Martin Wertheim, came to the UK on the Kindertransport in March 1939, aged nine – leaving behind his parents and brother Ernst. 

His brother followed to the UK some months later but their mother died of illness shortly before the outbreak of the war and their father and stepmother were murdered in the Holocaust. 

Cllr Edwardes said:

“Each year the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust set a theme – and this this year’s theme is ‘bridging generations’. This theme encourages remembrance to be carried forward by everyone, not just survivors’ descendants, it emphasises listening to and learning from the past to build a bridge between memory, history and action, creating hope for a better future.

“On Holocaust Memorial Day there is an understandable and entirely appropriate focus on the Nazi Holocaust. We should all remember that whilst the Nazi Holocaust ended over 80 years ago, its impact is still felt today.

“But so too are the subsequent genocides such as those in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. We should learn from past failures and challenge ongoing hatred.”

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) is marked each year on or around 27th January – the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp by the Soviet army in 1945. 

On and around this day, schools, communities, faith groups and others across the UK join together in national and local events to commemorate the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis and their collaborators, as well victims of other acts of Nazi persecution and of subsequent genocides.

Since 1945, there have been several other attempted genocides across the world – including Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur – and these are also commemorated on Holocaust Memorial Day.

HMD also provides an opportunity to reflect on the contemporary relevance of the Holocaust, an especially poignant consideration for this year’s commemorations, which take place against a background of rising antisemitism in the UK and globally and a fatal attack on worshippers at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue, in Manchester, last October.

We hope that HMD 2026 is an opportunity for people to come together, learn both from and about the past and take actions to make a better future for all.