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On April 20th I had the privilege of joining members of the Jewish community for their annual special commemoration of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) and The Annniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 2006 marks the 61st anniversary year of the ending of World War II and the Liberation of the Concentration Camps. It was held, as it has been for several years now, at Logan Hall in the Institute of Education, London.

This year, the focus was on the future and much of the ceremony was led by the younger members of the community, with the theme, 'Connecting with Your Past ~ Committing to Your Future'. There was, at one point, a powerful and challenging powerpoint presentation, linking the shoah to so many other atrocities and the effects of prejudice and intolerance on other communities.

As ever, there was the poignant lighting of the six memorial candles by holocaust survivors and their grandchildren.

But soon the survivors will all be overtaken by age and who will then remember them, their lives and their stories? This year saw the launch of a very special initiative of the Yad Vashem UK Foundation, called The Guardian of the Memory Campaign. This has taken its inspiration from a young boy called David Berger who said in his last letter, before being murdered by the Nazis in Vilna in 1941:

"I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger."

As we left the Hall, we were each given a leaflet, on which was the name of a victim of the Shoah - every leaflet had a different victim's name on it. The name on the leaflet handed to me was Abraham Mojowka, who was born in Szydlowiec, Poland in 1869 and died in Treblinka in 1942. The leaflet invited me to pledge to be the Guardian of the Memory of Abraham Mojowka, victim of the Holocaust, to honour his memory by lighting a candle each year on Yom Hashoah, 27th Nissan, the Memorial day for Victims of the Holocaust, and wear my Guardian lapel emblem in recognition of my commitment. This I will gladly do.

If you would like to do the same for another victim, email or write to Yad Vashem UK at 6 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2LP (email: guardianofthememory@yadvashem.org.uk).

You might also like to visit the website of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem which holds the names and details of more than 3 million of the 6 million victims of the Holocaust, which included over 1.5 million children.

So I invite you, please, to become THE GUARDIAN OF THE MEMORY OF ONE VICTIM, to help ensure they will never be forgotten or denied.

Margaret (Shepherd)