2013 Theme: Communities Together - Build a Bridge..
Residents in Adur and Worthing are invited this coming weekend to commemorate the national Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January.
The Adur commemoration will be in held at 11am on Saturday 26 January at Adur’s Tree of Life planted last year on the west side of Shoreham’s Buckingham Park. The Statement of Commitment signed up to by Adur last year will be read and a wreath will be laid at the foot of the Tree of Life. Readings will be said by representative of local faiths and resident invited to write their own messages to tie onto the tree branches.
The commemoration for Worthing will take place on Sunday 27th also around the Tree of Life planted some years ago in the south end of Beach House Park. The programme offers readings, prayers including the Jewish prayer for the dead – the Kaddish and some words from the local Imam, testimonials and laying a wreath. Afterwards the organiser, Worthing councillor Tom Wye, will invite people to write their own message to tie onto the tree of life.
Former Major, Tom Wye MBE DL, witnessed first-hand the terrible consequences of genocide whilst on military duty in Bosnia and Rwanda, and says on behalf of The Adur and Worthing: “We ask you all to imagine waking up to find that the neighbours you have known all your life and even sat next to at school, now walk past you without stopping, now forbid their children from playing with yours, now spit at you and even attack you.
Imagine having nowhere to turn, that walls are closing in and there is no escape. What would you do if you had done nothing wrong, yet you are to be punished nonetheless and no one will stand by you?”
On Holocaust Memorial Day Adur and Worthing councils ask you all to note the theme for this year commemoration - Building Bridges in our communities, and remember and stand by those who were forced to live through these experiences. We want you to honour those communities which were destroyed in the Holocaust, under Nazi Persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
All welcome!
