National Holocaust Museum marks 30 years with London gala honouring survivors

Eleven Holocaust survivors were honoured in London on Thursday evening as the organisation marked its 30th anniversary with a gala dinner highlighting the importance of Holocaust education in confronting antisemitism.

The event at the Royal Horseguards Hotel brought together survivors, educators, trustees and supporters of the museum, which was founded at Beth Shalom in Nottinghamshire by the Smith family and has spent three decades teaching young people about the Holocaust.

Among the survivors present were Steven Frank, Eva Clarke, Joan Salter, Renee Salt, Mala Tribich and Martin Stern, whose testimony has helped shape the museum’s educational work over the past 30 years.

Opening the evening, Lady Fiorella Massey MBE said the responsibility to challenge hatred could not be left to history alone.

“Holocaust history teaches us that every generation has to confront hatred in the present, not dismiss it as a distant history,” she said.

“Children do not hate by default.”

The museum’s co-founder, Dr Stephen Smith MBE, urged the audience to think about the lives of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust rather than reducing them to statistics.

“We pick it up as the murder of six million Jews,” he said. “Just think about that for a moment. We start at the end with six million dead Jews.”

He said Holocaust education should focus on the lives that were destroyed.

“What if we turned our Holocaust education from dying as Jews to living as Jews?” he said.

“Every single one of those nine million was living their lives… clothing their children, praying to their God, confused by the latest laws, battling for basic necessities.”

He added: “How dare we turn those beautiful, struggling souls into the statistics of history?”

Holocaust survivor and trustee Dr Martin Stern MBE reflected on his own childhood during the Nazi persecution.

“I was arrested at school and sent with my one-year-old sister to Westerbork prison in the Netherlands,” he said.

Stern said survivors continue to share their experiences because “education is vital to the future”.

The museum’s current work was outlined by Nicola Strauther, Director of Learning and Engagement, who said its programmes aim to help young people recognise how prejudice and misinformation develop.

“This isn’t about telling students what to think,” she said. “It’s about teaching them how to think.”

She added: “It didn’t happen overnight. It increased step by step.”

According to the museum, 30,000 schoolchildren visit the site each year, with a further 15,000 adults taking part in workshops and outreach programmes across the UK.

Closing the evening, chair of trustees Adam Dawson MBE said supporting the museum meant protecting truth and memory.

“When you support the National Holocaust Museum, you are doing more than funding a museum,” he said. “You are safeguarding memory. You are protecting the truth in a world where it is too often distorted.”

He added that the fight against antisemitism would ultimately be won through education.

“If we really believe ‘Never Again’, it will only be won in the classrooms, the schools, the museums.”

The gala also saw the unveiling of The White Roses of Beth Shalom, a new anniversary book featuring portraits of the final 20 Holocaust survivors connected with the Beth Shalom community.

Photographed by David Scheinmann, the portraits are accompanied by reflections from survivors’ final recorded interviews and accounts of their lives. The images will eventually form part of a “living walkway” at the entrance to the museum.

The evening served both as a celebration of the museum’s work over the past three decades and as a tribute to the survivors whose testimony continues to shape it.