Political Viewpoint

By Coun Richard Linden, Wheatley Ward Rayleigh.

THE horrors of the Holocaust were described at Rayleigh’s Mill Hall recently. Rochford District Council hosted a Memorial Day event.

Andrew White told the heart wrenching story of his mother, Hungarian born Lucy White, who survived two Nazi concentration camps and two slave labour camps during the Second World War, before being liberated by the British Army.

Tragically the rest of her family were killed in concentration camps, but she narrowly avoided death on a number of occasions during World War II.

After the war and a period working as an interpreter for the British Army, Lucy was able to join extended family in the UK with the help of her commanding officer. Years later she gave video testimony to the Steven Spielberg Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles, extracts of her testimony were played at the Mill Hall event.

Councillor Sarah Jane Page, Vice Chairman of Rochford District Council, who hosted the event in Rayleigh said: “Holocaust Memorial Day is internationally recognised as a very poignant reminder of the six million Jews and millions of other groups murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

“The significance of the day extends beyond the second world war and encompasses genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.”

The Mill Hall event was attended by a number of pupils from Fitzwimarc, Sweyne, King Edmund’s and Greenward Schools, also dignitaries including Mrs Jennifer Tolhurst Lord Lieutenant, the local MP Mark Francois, Lyndsey McCarthy the Mayor of Castle Point, Jill Reeves the Chair of Essex County Council and Kevin Lagan the Chairman of Maldon District Council.

Following the event flowers were laid at the holocaust monument in the garden square in front of Mill Hall and prayers said by the Reverent Kim Lepley.

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