THE director of the world’s oldest Holocaust archive will speak in Jersey next month to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Dr Toby Simpson, director of The Wiener Holocaust Library in London, will deliver the Island’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day address on 27 January.
The event remembers the millions who lost their lives and seeks to ensure such atrocities are not repeated.
The Wiener Holocaust Library, founded before the Second World War, has been a leader in Holocaust research and education for decades.
Dr Simpson, who has been with the Library since 2011, was described as playing a key role in expanding its exhibitions, tours and outreach.
On the day of his visit to the Island, Jersey Library will also launch a new online platform, the Wiener Digital Collections, which will make thousands of historical documents, photographs, and accounts available for public use.
The project builds on earlier work led by Dr Simpson that catalogued and digitised over 1,000 eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust.
Speaking ahead of his trip to Jersey, Dr Simpson said: “If we are to build a better future, we must grapple more effectively with our past.
“As Britain’s most extensive Holocaust archive, we have a special responsibility to support the excellent work that is happening in Jersey, and throughout the Channel Islands, to remember and understand the history of the Nazi occupation of the Islands.”
This year’s commemoration will take place at the Occupation Tapestry Gallery at the Maritime Museum and the Lighthouse Memorial on the New North Quay.
The ceremony is organised by Jersey Heritage on behalf of the Office of the Bailiff, in partnership with the Jersey Jewish Congregation, the Jersey Arts Centre and the UK Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
Martha Bernstein, of the Holocaust Memorial Day Advisory Panel to Jersey Heritage, said: “As director of the world’s oldest archival and library collection relating to the Holocaust and Nazi era, Dr Simpson’s knowledge and experience of sharing research, education and remembrance of this time in history will add great poignancy to the commemoration in Jersey and we look forward to welcoming him to the Island.”
Coinciding with Dr Simpson’s visit, a free exhibition titled On British Soil: Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Channel Island is opening in the Link Gallery at the Jersey Museum on 3 January.
The exhibition explores the plight of Jewish Islanders, the experience of foreign labourers of the Organisation Todt (a civil engineering group that worked throughout the occupied territories) and civilian political prisoners imprisoned and deported for acts of disobedience and defiance.
It has been prepared by Barbara Warnock from the Wiener Holocaust Library and Gilly Carr from Cambridge University.
The exhibition runs until 29 January and will later be made available for loan to other organisations across the Channel Islands and beyond.
Islanders are invited to attend Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday 27 January 2025, beginning at 1pm.
