COMMEMORATION OF HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY 2010

Theresa Villiers, MP for Chipping Barnet has issued the following statement regarding Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations at the Middlesex University's Ricketts Quadrangle in the Burroughs, Hendon, today.

"Barnet's annual commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day is always a moving ceremony. Every year, the event organised by Barnet Council gives us the chance to reflect on the enormity of the crime committed and to remember the six million Jewish victims and so many others who perished just because of who they were.

The music provided by the London Cantorial Singers is always an integral part of the event. Their contribution was made particularly poignant this year because they performed a work by Arthur Poznanski. Mr Posnanski attended Barnet's 2009 Holocaust commemoration but sadly died a few months ago.

As the leader of the choir told us, Mr Poznanski was a Holocaust survivor. In 1942, when he was just 14, his parents and two of his brothers were taken from their home in Poland and he never saw them again. He and his other brother were not arrested because they were working in a nearby glass factory.

Separated from his remaining brother, Mr Poznanski was later taken to Buchenwald, then Flosberg but managed to escape from the train that was carrying him to Mauthausen. The others who jumped from the train were shot but Mr Poznanski attributed his survival to a metal spoon he was carrying which deflected a bullet.

His experience is typical of the great courage and enormous suffering of so many who were caught up in the horrors of the Holocaust but an amazing twist to his story was that after his escape he heard that his brother, who he thought had died, was in fact in Theresienstadt. He managed to smuggle himself into the camp and was reunited with his brother. The two boys eventually settled in England.

Ms Poznanski's story reminds us of the importance of remembering the Holocaust even though fewer and fewer survivors remain with us to give first hand evidence.

But his example also illustrates this year's theme, 'the legacy of hope'. It is hard to associate hope with a tragedy of the magnitude of the Holocaust. However, the fact that Authur Poznanski survived to tell his story and to write beautiful music shows that hope can emerge even from events as horrific as those we are remembering this week.