Thamesmead remembers the Holocaust

11:47am Wednesday 9th January 2008

Thamesmead's leading community developement agency, Trust Thamesmead is commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January 2008) by staging a month long photographic exhibition of stark images that highlight the terrible suffering faced by millions of people sixty years ago.

Testimony - The Heartstone Auschwitz Memorial Photographic Exhibition - depicts Auschwitz as it is today and images include the ruins of the gas chambers, the huts where people slept and piles of belongings of people who died in the camp. They are a poignant reminder of the atrocities that happened at the camp during the Holocaust.

Trust Thamesmead's Chief Executive Mick Hayes welcomed this important exhibition to Thamesmead.

He said "For us to really understand what happened we would need to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland but not many of us will ever be able to do that. Hopefully this exhibition has been able to bring the camp and what actually happened there to us.

"The exhibition raises the issues of racism, hatred and bigotry and in a most powerful way highlights the need for tolerance and understanding. I hope many local people will take the opportunity to see it."

The exhibition opens with the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau taking the audience on a journey from first arrival at the end of the railway line to the first selection point as to who lived or died.

Throughout the exhibition are the haunting and poignant stories of people who survived the Holocaust or who had a strong association with it.

The story ends with the overwhelming feeling of hope and the future through the inclusion of images of young people taking part in the 'March of the Living', a march undertaken each year by camp survivors and their descendants.

The exhibition is available to view 9:00am-5:00pm, Monday-Friday between now until the end of January at Trust Thamesmead, 19a Joyce Dawson Way, Thamesmead town centre. T: 020 8320 4470.

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