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Bob MacKenzie Facebook Interview

On Sunday 26th April, Holocaust survivor Bob MacKenzie participated in a live phonecall interview on Facebook Live with Laura Pasternak, a Holocaust Educational Trust Regional Ambassador for Scotland. You can watch the interesting videos in two parts on www.facebook.com/hetrascotland.

Laura Pasternak talking to Bob Mackenzie over Facebook Live

As a Kindertransportee to the UK in 1939 aged 8, Bob, originally from Chemnitz, Germany was really keen for more people to learn about the Kindertransport while in lockdown.

Bob told of his Jewish father and Lutheran mother’s unimaginable decision to send him to the UK for safety before the war broke out, his arrival at the priory in Selkirk and welcome from the MacKenzie family who took him in with his older sister Isolde.

Bob emphasised the need to remember the generosity of families across Britain who sponsered and looked after refugee children like him. He ultimately showed his gratitude to his foster father by taking the family name (as they had only daughters) when he took British nationality in 1950.

Bob is used to volunteering and socialising, so lockdown presented an opportunity to be creative with technology and spread the work about Kindertransport to people stuck at home.

Sunday’s stream reached 671 people, had 348 views and 199 ‘engagements’ (comments, questions, ‘likes’ shares etc.)!

Laura wants to thank Gathering the Voices for having interviewed Bob back in 2014.

Bob’s testimony helped Laura steer the interview, and she showed the photos on the website on-screen during the call!

Food for Thought

Queens Cross and Glasgow Caledonian University have joined up to host a new series of free talks where people can learn and debate with experts about important subjects in local community venues.

Gathering the voices has collected over 45 testimonies from men and women who came to Scotland to escape from Nazi persecution.

Find out more by attending Food for thought, Thursday 27th February, Windsor Community Hall.

Book: socialregeneration@qcha.org.uk

Holocaust Memorial Lecture Series

Glasgow University has kindly agreed to link their website of Holocaust Memorial Lecture Series with the Gathering the Voices website. Every year these lectures are over-subscribed.

The Holocaust Memorial Lecture Series was initiated in 2001 by Professor Bernard Wasserstein and Emeritus Professor Otto Hutter, and has since become a key fixture in the University’s event calendar, attended by a large and diverse audience. This project is sponsored by The Association of Jewish Refugees. This website can be found at: www.gla.ac.uk/events/holocaustmemorial.

This year’s lecture will be added to the website in the near future.

East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire’s 2020 Holocaust Memorial Day Event

Howard Singerman, one of the founder members of Gathering the Voices, was the keynote speaker at East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire’s 2020 Holocaust Memorial Day event, which this year was commemorating the 75^th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

It was a powerful ceremony with local school pupils playing a major role and setting the scene musically.

The other speaker, Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura, spoke movingly of her experiences and losses as a young child growing up in Bosnia at the time of the civil war in Yugoslavia.

Howard then, with great dignity, told his mother’s story from the time she and her family were deported from Hungary in June 1944 to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. He spoke of the nearly four hundred and thirty thousand Hungarian Jews who were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau in a period of just two months, and of the need to remember and learn from the horror of the Holocaust. He read two of the poems he has written in honour of his mother and her murdered family. His speech was very powerful and touched the hearts of all who were present.

After the ceremony the guests were invited to Carmichael Hall for tea, and also had the opportunity to view the Anne Frank Exhibition and learn more about the Gathering the Voices project.

Saskia Tepe in Southern Arizona

On 5th December, and 9th and 26th January I spoke at three separate 55+ communities in Southern Arizona, to a total of over 150 residents ranging in age from 55 to 80, in order to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and introduce the concept and aims of International Holocaust Memorial Day.

Audiences were very receptive, interested in the idea of oral databases like Gathering the voices as they felt personal stories of survival were a wonderful way of accessing history and learning lessons from the past.

Of course, my mother’s story continues to inspire and I am proud that I can continue to share it here in the USA.