Past event

Jews who fled Hitler and changed the world. The heroic story of Rezsö Kasztner, the “Hungarian Oskar Schindler” who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis, only to be accused of collaboration and

On a grey afternoon in 1932, a Stuttgart classroom is stirred by the arrival of a newcomer. Middle-class Hans is intrigued by the aristocratic new boy, Konradin, and before long they become best friends. It’s a friendship of the greatest kind, of shared interests and long conversations, of hikes in the German hills and growing up together.

In this now classic Holocaust memoir, Simcha Bunem Unsdorfer recounts his survival of the Nazi camps. Clinging fiercely to his faith in God, the nineteen year old Unsdorfer faced the unspeakable horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald with courage and moral defiance, a testament to the abiding strength of the Jewish spirit.

Warsaw, September 1939. For twelve-year-old best friends, Stefan and Marcus, the zoo is their playground. Stefan lives with his family at the zoo and has grown up with the animals and their keepers. But Marcus is Jewish, and when Nazi troops invade Warsaw their world is torn apart. Against all odds and at enormous risk, their fathers devise a wild scheme to protect Stefan’s family and other Jews. But boys will be boys, and a rebellious act of revenge threatens everyone.

A profound and profoundly important book. A moving personal detective story, an uncovering of secret pasts, and a book that explores the creation and development of world-changing legal concepts that came about as a result of the unprecedented atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich.

The incredible story of the Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist and the woman he loved. Lale Sokolov is well-dressed, a charmer, a ladies' man. He is also a Jew. On the first transport from Slovakia to Auschwitz in 1942, Lale immediately stands out to his fellow prisoners.

Sent to Auschwitz on the first Jewish transport, Rena Kornreich survived the Nazi death camps for over three years. While there she was reunited with her sister Danka. Each day became a struggle to fulfil the promise Rena made to her mother when the family was forced to split apart--a promise to take care of her sister

Margaret Hodge was Minister for Children in 2003, before becoming Minister of State for Culture and Tourism in 2005. In 2010 she was elected Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee where she served until 2015. Since 2018, Margaret has been Chair of Council at Royal Holloway, University of London. Margaret is a strong advocate for Holocaust Education and the awareness of antisemitism, confronting Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in parliament on this.

The discussion was led by Simon Bentley, Chairman of Yad Vashem UK Foundation and was attending by approximately 16 people.

Many of you know the story of the death camps - Auschwitz, Birkenau, Ravensbrück and Treblinka.  What you might not know is the story of the Jewish resistance to the horrors of the death camps - of the courageous men and women who dared to make a stand and fight. This book also tells a story of ‘Din’ meaning, ‘judgement’ in Hebrew. In 1945, after the war, a small group of Jews formed this secret organisation to ensure the Nazis should know the pain to torture and brutality suffered by over 6 million Jews.  Many powerful Nazis died at their hands – and then they worked out the most daring plan of all, a scheme to poison the water supply to a quarter of a million German homes.

In 2016, 180 books of Rena’s Promise, by Heather Dune Macadam, was sent to JFS and read by the year 9 + students.  This was set up together with Simon Rinkoff

Our guest speaker for the event was Sir Eric Pickles, the British Government’s Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues.  Sir Eric has been at the forefront of British politics for a remarkable four decades.

It was when he saw his German parents’ reaction to the Israeli flag at the Munich Olympics and two days later, their reaction when 11 Israeli athletes were murdered, that Bernd Wollschlaeger realised that the glaring lack of knowledge he had of his father’s wartime history was significant.