"We will strive to ensure that future generations are aware of the Holocaust and other acts of genocide and reflect upon their consequences. We vow to remember the victims of Nazi persecution and all genocide." (From Barnet Council's statement of commitment to Holocaust Memorial Day).

The Jewish Museum at the Sternberg Centre in East End Road, Finchley, marked the official Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday with the launch of an exhibition, Am I My Brother's Keeper? Rescue in the Holocaust.

The exhibition focuses on Nazi Europe and why a few people Jews and non-Jews were brave enough to risk their own lives to rescue others. Finchley ceramic artist Jenny Stolzenberg, whose father William Powell survived Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, will be displaying her creation of ceramic shoes, which symbolise the lives lost in the Holocaust, as part of the exhibition.

"Shoes are so incredibly evocative," said Mrs Stolzenberg, 55. "I imagine that probably everyone here today remembers their very first pair of shoes, their style, their colour and the pride with which they wore them.

"Shoes can tell us so much about their owner. In so many accounts of survivors there was invariably a story about shoes. They caused pain, infection, death, and occasionally, more happily, they saved lives."

A charity bicycle ride from Berlin to Auschwitz provided the inspiration for Mrs Stolzenberg's work. She spent more than one year researching the project at the Imperial War Museum and reading accounts of survivors, as well as speaking to them in person.

"I spoke to survivors about their experiences. This was a humbling and often painful process for me as I had never felt able to ask my father about what exactly had happened to him," she said.

"I had always felt he had not wanted to talk to me about his experiences. Either he simply didn't want to relive his trauma possibly he didn't want to burden me with his story. I needed to to pay homage to all those special and unique lives that were so painfully and senselessly lost.

"And I wanted to make work that had aesthetic qualities which would be remembered for its beauty, rather than something that was impactful in a shocking, bloody or horrific way."

Mrs Stolzenberg dedicated the exhibition to the memory of her father who died 13 years ago. "I gave my work the title of Forgive and Do Not Forget because this was something he said in rare moments of alluding to his experiences.

"Most people will, of course, say that you cannot forgive the unforgivable and I respect this view totally.

"What I understood my father to be saying was that we need to forgive successive generations in order to move on and not remain bitter."

The exhibition runs until June 8. A specially-written educational resource pack will be provided for schools.

January 28, 2003 19:00