I was a number... Memories of the Holocaust

This contemplative evening uses film, music and conversation to explore the role memory and guardianship plays in preserving awareness of the Holocaust.

Join survivor Ben Helfgott, Dr James Smith (The Holocaust Centre), Dr Piotr Trojański (Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau) playwright and actor Jonathan Salt, singer Katy Carr and filmmaker Hannah Lovell to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. Chaired by Professor Mary Fulbrook (UCL).

The event includes a screening of Kazik and the Kommander's Carr - a film produced by Katy Carr and directed by Hannah Lovell about Kazimierz 'Kazik' Piechowski, a Polish boy scout, and three other political prisoners, who disguised themselves as SS officers and drove out of Auschwitz in 1942 - and a concert of songs inspired by WWII by Katy Carr and Hanna Lovell.

27 January is marked in commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, providing an opportunity to learn lessons from genocides and to challenge hatred and persecution.

Participants:

Katy Carr
Nottingham-raised singer, musician, songwriter and aviator of Polish roots. Her latest album, Paszport, including the song Kazik and the Kommander's Carr from the film of the same title she created in collaboration with Hannah Lovell (film director), has received glowing reviews in the British media and been nominated for the prestigious Songlines Music Awards 2013.

Professor Mary Fulbrook
Professor of German History at UCL. Her research interests have ranged across a variety of fields, including religion and society in early modern Europe, the German dictatorships of the twentieth century, Europe after the Holocaust, and historiography and social theory. Her latest publication is A Small Town near Auschwitz is a deeply moving analysis of  how countless local functionaries across the Third Reich facilitated the murderous plans of a relatively small number among the Nazi elite and of how those plans could never have been realised, on the same scale, without the diligent cooperation of these generally very ordinary administrators.

Ben Helfgott MBE
A Polish/British Holocaust survivor and former champion weightlifter. He is one of two Jewish athletes to have competed in the Olympics after surviving the Holocaust - he represented Great Britain at the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Games. He is also a chairman of the ‘45 Aid Society for Holocaust Survivors’ and President of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Hannah Lovell
British filmmaker and director of Kazik and the Kommander's Carr.

Jonathan Salt
Author and actor of the play Confessions of a Butterfly based on Janusz Korczak's diary reflecting the last hours of his life; authority on the Holocaust: he also works in education with schools and prisons.

Dr James Smith
Co-founder and chairman of the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre - Britain's first dedicated Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre in Nottinghamshire which opened in 1995 and the founder of the Aegis Trust in the UK.

Dr Piotr Trojański
Historian; Assistant Professor at the Institute of History of the Pedagogical University of Cracow (Head of the Division for Ethnic and National Minorities); lecturer at the Center for Holocaust Studies at Jagiellonian University, specialising in modern Jewish history, history didactics and especially Holocaust education. Since 2006 he has been working as an academic advisor for the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim (Director of the programme of postgraduate studies 'Totalitarianism – Nazis – Holocaust'). He is also a member of the International Task Force for Holocaust Education Remembrance and Research; a former member of the International Auschwitz Council; and co-author of the first Polish curriculum and textbook for teaching about the Holocaust in Poland.

In association with The Polish Cultural Institute