Stephen Fry meets with 89 year-old Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a surviving member of the Women’s Orchestra in Auschwitz, as part of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s ‘Memory Makers’ arts project. The initiative launches today [Monday 17 November 2014], 70 days before the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Star joins British artists and survivors to ‘keep the memory alive’
Stephen Fry will today [Monday 17th November 2014] join British artists and a group of Holocaust and genocide survivors in launching a major new arts project, in which the survivors’ stories will be interpreted and retold in poetry, ceramics, sculpture, illustration and collage.
The ‘Memory Makers’ project, run by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and launched 70 days before the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, pairs seven British artists with genocide survivors living in the UK. The artists, including Fry, are meeting with survivors to hear their remarkable stories, before creating a work of art that captures and commemorates their experience, retelling it in a way that will shed fresh light on the horrors and consequences of the atrocities.
Stephen Fry’s meeting with 89 year-old Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a cellist and a surviving member of the Women’s Orchestra in Auschwitz, took place at the start of November and he is currently working on a written response to the experiences she shared with him at her home in London.
Stephen Fry says:
“The grotesque and growing spectre of Holocaust denial makes it more and more urgent for the young, now so many more generations separated from the Shoah, to listen to those who went through it and to understand the meaning of it. How else can its repetition – against any racial or other group in any society – be prevented? By meeting with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and contributing to the Memory Makers project I hope more people will mark Holocaust Memorial Day by reading and listening to the testimony of Holocaust survivors.”
Fry’s piece and the other works in the project will be revealed to the public on Hmd.org.uk in the week leading up to Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January 2015, which marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and 20 years since the Genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia.
The artist and survivor meetings also include:
– Visually impaired illustrator Kimberly Burrows, meeting 92 year-old Holocaust survivor Sabina Miller
– Welsh animator Gemma Green-Hope, meeting Holocaust survivor Ivor Perl, 82
– London-born collage artist Martin O’Neil, in collaboration with Andrew Griffin, meeting 82 year-old Holocaust survivor Bettine Le Beau
– Clare Twomey, a sculptor who works in clay, meeting Nisad ‘Šiško’ Jakupovi?, 49, a survivor of the Omarska Concentration Camp in Bosnia
– London-based poet Sarah Hesketh, meeting Holocaust survivor 84 year-old Eve Kugler
– Film director Debs Paterson meeting with Holocaust survivor Janine Webber
Olivia Marks-Woldman, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust says:
“It is absolutely vital that the lessons of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides are not lost to history. Survivors’ experiences remind us how important it is to confront all forms of hatred and discrimination, and this group of British artists is helping to interpret their stories in new ways.”
To find out more about the survivors and artists visit Hmd.org.uk where the artworks will be revealed in January, ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January 2015.
Follow The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust on Twitter @hmd_UK #hmd2015 #MemoryMakers.
About Holocaust Memorial Day
Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January is the day for everyone to remember the millions of people murdered in the Holocaust, under Nazi Persecution and in the subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. 27 January 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and 20 years since the Genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia.
