'Lies are becoming normalised' Holocaust event told

6 hours ago

Alec BlackmanCoventry

News image — Councillor Abdul Saleem Khan, Deputy Leader of Coventry City Council, welcomed guests to Coventry's Belgrade Theatre to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2026

Coventry City Council The image shows a bald man, dressed in a dark suit and wearing a white shirt with a yellow and blue striped tie, standing in front of a backdrop that reads 'Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.' — Councillor Abdul Saleem Khan, Deputy Leader of Coventry City Council, welcomed guests to Coventry's Belgrade Theatre to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2026

The Holocaust and the Coventry Blitz have been marked at the same time, with a specially choreographed dance involving local children and older performers.

The performance, at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, featured children from Ascension Dance, and others from Out of Whack from the Warwick Arts Centre, who are all over 60.

The dance, called Rubble, told a story based around the aftermath of the blitz on Coventry in November 1940 and the strength of community needed to get through.

The day also heard from Jeanette Marx, whose mother was liberated from Ravensbruck concentration camp. She warned of "lies being normalised" when addressing the importance of remembering the Holocaust.

Coventry City Council The image shows two women. On the left is a woman in a grey, brown and black sweater. The picture of the woman on the right is in black and white and shows her wearing a heavy winter coat and a head scarf. — Jeanette Marx (left), whose mother Mascha Nachmansson (right), survived both Auschwitz and Ravensbruck concentration camps, was the keynote speaker at the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Coventry

Jeanette's mother Mascha Nachmansson was born in Lodz, Poland in 1920 and was living in the city's ghetto after the Nazis invaded.

For the next five years, she was used as a slave labourer before she was interned at the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp and finally moved to the women-only Ravensbruck camp, where she was liberated in April 1945.

She then moved to Sweden, got married and started a new life, visiting schools and telling others about the Holocaust.

"I found out about her experiences after I'd left home and got married. She never spoke to us about what had happened during the Holocaust," Marx said.

Some of those speeches were recorded and it was a combination of those recordings, family research and other investigations, that led her to discover what her mum went through.

She now works with the charity Generation2Generation, which aims to keep the testimony of those affected by the Holocaust alive.

Marx said there has never been a greater need for education about the lessons of the Holocaust.

She added there has been an alarming rise in cases of antisemitism, because society has ignored what happened.

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, suggest that cases of hate crime reported to West Midlands Police by Jewish people in the force area, have almost doubled since 2022 - from 27 to 53.

"(People) continue to either deny or distort the Holocaust. Lies are becoming normalised and society's just not prepared to listen," said Marx.

That's why she continues her mother's educational legacy, including delivering the keynote speech on Holocaust Memorial Day at Coventry's Belgrade Theatre.

"It is so important because if we don't remember the past, we can't protect what's going to happen in the future."

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