The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation: Britain's Promise to Remember

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Wednesday, 20 January, 2016

Every country has a its own way of dealing with Holocaust remembrance and education. Ben Barkow, director of EHRI partner, the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide in London, gives us an update on the latest developments in the UK.

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2014 the UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced the creation of a commission to investigate the future of Holocaust commemoration and education in Britain. The commission – chaired by Mick (now Sir Mick) Davis, an industrialist, was made up of business leaders, religious and community leaders and educators and film and television celebrities and included two expert groups to address the topics of commemoration and education respectively.

The Holocaust Commission

Its goal was set out as follows: “The Holocaust Commission will investigate what further measures should be taken to ensure Britain has a permanent and fitting memorial to the Holocaust, along with sufficient educational and research resources for future generations.” The commission met regularly at No 10 Downing Street and issued a call for evidence from any and all interested parties. It also travelled the world to research best practice in the leading museums and educational institutions in other countries.

Britain's Promise to Remember

On Holocaust Memorial day 2015 the Commission published its findings in a report called Britain’s Promise to Remember. The prime Minister announced that government would contribute £50 million towards implementing its recommendations.

Four fundamental gaps

The report recorded the best practice being carried out by a number of outstanding institutions in the UK, but also identified "four fundamental gaps in Britain’s current efforts to commemorate and educate about the Holocaust". These gaps were:

  • the lack of an appropriate national memorial,
  • the failure of Holocaust educational programmes and practices to reach significant numbers of young people,
  • inadequate support for regional projects,
  • and an urgent need to collect and preserve Holocaust testimony.

Its four recommendations were the construction of a "striking and prominent" national memorial, a learning centre at the heart of a campus intended to drive national Holocaust educational activity, the creation of an endowment fund to support the learning centre and its initiatives, and a programme for collecting Holocaust testimony.

UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation

Having reported, the Commission wound up and was succeeded by the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette, a television producer and Chairman of the UK Arts Council. The Trustees of the Foundation include politicians, industrialists, religious leaders and figures from the media – but no-one from the UK Holocaust commemoration or education sector. Its first priority has been the collection of testimony. A television production company, Atlantic Productions, was commissioned to collect testimony in a "future proof" way. This involves filming interviews in high definition to allow innovative use of the results in initiatives such as ‘interactive virtual survivors’, film clips of survivors answering a pre-set number of commonly-asked questions about the Holocaust. Work on this aspect began at once, with such energy that some experts questioned whether sufficient attention had been paid to identify where the testimony gaps are, what best practice in oral history is and – most seriously – the welfare and support needs of testifiers who are in extreme old age and many of whom have never before spoken of their traumatic experiences. Practitioners in the field have worked hard to support the Foundation to get these aspects of the collecting process right, and there is growing confidence that the new testimonies will offer a valuable educational resource for the future.

Educational Advisory Group

The Foundation has also created an Educational Advisory Group comprising many of the leading organisations and individuals in the field. After meeting in two plenary sessions, the Group has divided into four subgroups to address the following issues: the uses of testimony as an element in Holocaust education, the uses of evidence other than testimony, the place of Holocaust education in schools and how this might be protected and improved (and embracing issues such as the place of Holocaust education in the effort to inculcate "British values" in pupils), and a group to elucidate the founding premise of the Learning Centre.

Great pressure of time

These four subgroups are working under great pressure of time, as the Foundation strives to meet its very ambitious objective of having the Memorial constructed by the end of 2017 and the Learning Centre built and working before the next General Election in 2020. The testimony collecting project is to be complete by the end of this year.

Photo: © The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide