Over a decade of activities promoting the memory and messages of Anne Frank’s short life was recognized last week with a special presentation to 94-year-old Dutch-born Boyd (Boudewijn) Klap.
On a cold, windy Wellington day about 200 people gathered in a park – a former quarry – to watch New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister unveil a challenging new Anne Frank memorial in Wellington.
Holocaust survivors were honoured at the Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations in the capital, Wellington, at the same time as speakers referred to changes needed in New Zealand to counter rising antisemitism.
This year’s Kristallnacht commemoration concert on 10 November brought us more of the annual event’s distinctive quality – works associated with the Holocaust performed by leading New Zealand musicians.
The commemoration of what would have been Anne Frank’s 90th birthday, had she survived Bergen-Belsen, was a double event for the Wellington Jewish community.
The focus of Wellington’s Yom Hashoah observance on 1 May was the sad fate of Hungarian Jewry 75 years ago when hundreds of thousands were deported to their death in Auschwitz-Birkenau between May and July 1944.
With the theme this year of “Righteous Among the Nations,” the overflowing marquee of people attending this year’s United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day, at Wellington’s rural Makara cemetery, heard many moving references to the Righteous, including a previously untold story of what befell a Dutch family.
“Our collaboration with the Human Rights Commission’s ‘Give nothing to racism’ campaign shows how strongly Holocaust remembrance contributes to the aim of improving New Zealand society,” Holocaust Centre of New Zealand director Inge Woolf said today.
Visitors to Wellington NZ around this coming 9 November can take in a Kristallnacht commemoration concert of special music related to that violent and tragic event.
