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On Wednesday 7 February 2024, the University hosted its annual Holocaust Memorial Day event which included the testimony of a Holocaust survivor, a film screening and an exhibition. Sussex was the first university to host a Holocaust Memorial event and this annual event is testament to our commitment to ensuring that the tragic mistakes of the past are never repeated or forgotten.  

We were honoured to welcome Ivor Perl BEM and his granddaughter Lia Bratt who gave testimony of Ivor’s childhood during the Holocaust. 

Ivor, who was born in the Hungarian town of Mako, was only 12 years old when he was taken to Auschwitz. He survived with the help of his older brother, Alec, but the rest of his family including his parents and seven siblings were murdered. After liberation, the brothers lived in a camp for displaced persons until the Red Cross informed them that neither their parents or siblings had survived. In 1945 Ivor and Alec arrived in England and settled in London.  

Lia Bratt is a speaker for the Holocaust Education charity (G2G), which empowers second and third generation Holocaust survivors and close family friends to present their family histories to a wide range of audiences. Through the use of survivor testimony, G2G aims to keep these Holocaust stories alive and promote the importance of inclusivity and human rights. 

For those of you who were unable to attend the event, you can watch the recording of Ivor Perl’s testimony in Lia’s voice on YouTube: . 

After Ivor’s testimony, we welcomed filmmaker Amanda Rubin for a discussion of her film The Third Reich of Dreams, which is still in pre-production. Guests had the opportunity to watch a taster and ask questions to Amanda in a session chaired by Professor Ivor Gaber, Professor of Political Journalism in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities.. 

Alongside the film screening and Ivor Perl’s testimony, an exhibition was displayed in the foyer of the Attenborough Centre. Expelled, which was coordinated by Katrin Steffen, Professor of European and Jewish History and Culture in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities with the kind permission of the Wiener Library in London,tells the history of the Polenaktion, the first mass deportation of Jews from Germany at the end of October 1938.  

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As part of the University’s wider Holocaust Memorial Day programme, on Friday 9 February the Student Centre hosted a Remembering the Roma Holocaust exhibition. The exhibition used the historic persecution and genocide of the Sinti and Roma people to explore persistent contemporary prejudices to our own Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities. Co-created with members of the University’s student body and academics, community representatives, and external practitioners, this event featured animated oral testimony and an original book reading from Settela’s Last Road author Janna Eliot, together with further information, discussion, and resources.