Sir Nicholas Winton’s daughter calls for youth to ‘represent victims of the Shoah’

Sir Nicholas Winton’s daughter has asked young ambassadors of the Holocaust Education Trust to “shape the future” by representing the victims of the Shoah.

Barbara Winton was joined by Jewish community leaders and Jews saved from the Holocaust by efforts such as her father’s at the fourth annual Ambassador Conference in central London.

“My father was told to wait and that something would happen but he didn’t, he just went ahead and did it,” said Barbara. “That’s our message to young people today: don’t wait for other people to do things as they may never do.”

HET Ambassadors are young adults who have been on the organisation’s Lessons from Auschwitz Project. They come back to the UK and undertake a range of activities, such as writing articles, giving presentations, inviting Holocaust survivors to schools, arranging film screenings and marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis told the youngsters to make an impact by helping to “create a beautiful harmony in our society,” adding: “You will be Ambassadors for the men, women and children who were denied the right to live out their lives.”

The event focused on learning more information about the Holocaust and showing the Ambassadors how to take “practical steps to combat anti-Semitism, racism and intolerance today”.

Joining them were leading figures such as BBC presenter Nick Robinson and Philippe Sands QC, a barrister specialising in international law including genocide and crimes against humanity.

Other speakers included Lord Browne of Madingley, the head of the Ambassador programme and former boss of oil giant BP, and Sir Eric Pickles MP, head of Conservative Friends of Israel and the UK’s special envoy on post-Holocaust issues.

Joining Winton on stage was Lord Alf Dubs, the Labour peer who was himself saved from the Holocaust as a young boy on one of the Kindertransport. He told the Ambassadors: “You are here to make a difference.”