Guernsey’s Jewish community has gathered to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, which in Hebrew is called Yom HaShoah.
Yesterday’s gathering was poignantly held near the plaques commemorating the lives of people deported from the island during the Second World War, at the White Rock.
One of those plaques honours the memory of Marianne Grunfeld, Auguste Spitz, and Therese Steiner.
The three Jewish women were deported from the island during the Occupation and each of them later died at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Yesterday’s service was held to mark the end of the Holocaust, and to commemorate the six million Jews murdered.
The liberation of Jews from the concentration camps across Nazi occupied Europe, and the heroism of survivors and rescuers, was also marked.
Guernsey does not have a Rabbi, so Reverend Linda Le Vasseur was asked to lead the Yom HaShoah service. It was attended by around twenty people.
Members of the local Jewish community gave readings, while memorial candles were lit and the Kaddish – the Jewish prayer for the departed – was recited.
Mathew Newman, a local advocate, who has lived in Guernsey for nearly 20 years, attended the service.
“When I first came here there were hardly any Jewish people at all, I think I met one. Now the community is much larger, and we have a lovely Whatsapp group and I think it’s nearing forty people.
“We’re an informal group representing the Jewish community on the island. And it’s important, now that there is more a community, that we can remember what happened. Not just to the three ladies who got deported, but to everyone else who suffered during the war, on Yom HaShoah, to just give the Jewish people who died, an extra bit of remembering I suppose, because they are the ones who got deported, purely for their religion.
“The fate they suffered was truly awful and we don’t want that to ever happen again. With what’s going on in the world, having focus on the past is key, that there is awareness.”
Darren Vogel said Yom HaShoah is as a “particularly relevant” occasion for the Jewish community.
“Yom HaShoah is when Israel and the Jewish community worldwide mark the end of the Holocaust, the liberation from the camps. It’s particularly relevent as it’s the 80th anniversary this year.
“We of course remember Holocaust Memorial Day, but this day is a very important, particularly in Israel, where nothing will be open. It will be a very solemn day of reflection, marking the terrible atrocities of the Holocaust.”
During the German Occupation of the Channel Islands between 1940 and 1945 thousands of people were persecuted, including Jews, slave labourers and those who resisted against the Nazi forces.
In total, more than 1000 Guernsey and Sark residents were deported to either Germany or France during the Second World War.
Many of these people had committed only minor offences.
Sixteen of them are remembered on a separate plaque in St Peter Port, which were erected to their memory in 2010.