The Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester organised its 150th event which was a visit to Holocaust Centre North at the University of Huddersfield.
Holocaust Centre North (HCN) in Huddersfield opened in 2018, the brainchild of Holocaust survivors mainly from the West Yorkshire area. The Muslim Jewish Forum (MJF) of Greater Manchester paid a visit to the centre at the beginning of November.
HCN’s exhibition focuses on 16 men and women who were all born into Jewish families in Central and Eastern Europe whose lives were changed forever by the German Nazi regime because their families and communities were destroyed. All originally came to different parts of the UK but settled and made new lives for themselves in the north. The exhibition tells their stories to keep the memories of their families alive.
One of the 16 people featured is Trude Silman. Her daughter, Judith Smith, told the MJF visitors Trude’s story. Trude was born in Bratislava in 1929. When the Nazis began their occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, life changed dramatically for Jewish citizens. Trude’s parents decided to send her with her aunt and cousin to the UK for her protection when she was just nine years old.
It was very poignant when Judith stated that her mother could not remember saying goodbye to her parents as a child and that unfortunately, she never saw them again. Despite such trauma in her early years Trude went on to study Biochemistry at Leeds University where she met her husband, Morris, and they had two daughters together. She has been thankful for the kindness people in her adopted homeland of the UK have always shown her. Trude is now 95 years old and still lives in Yorkshire.
MJF’s Muslim Co-Chair Mohammed Amin said: “Like my previous visits to Holocaust museums elsewhere, this was a sombre day. HCN’s displays remind you that each person who perished in the Holocaust was an individual with a name, a family, and hopes for the future. HCN reminds you of where demonising ‘the other’ leads.”