Holocaust Memorial Day 2022 - 'Into the Arms of Strangers'
Published: 14 October 2021
Holocaust Memorial
Derby has a proud record of organising events for Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January), having a track record over two decades.
A key feature of our annual offer has been screenings at Quad, for schools, of the documentary film ‘Into the Arms of Strangers’ – about the Kindertransports of 1938/39. The screenings have been followed by a Q&A session with someone who was on these evacuations of children, subsequently growing up in Britain. Feedback over twenty years has been consistently positive.
Covid prevented the screenings in January 2021 and the Derby HMD Planning Group has considered how to re-introduce the sessions, but in a more accessible way – understanding how trips out of school are so resource intensive.
The film is available online or on DVD free of charge to schools, so could be shown on a date and time most convenient to you, on or in the period leading up to 27 January. There is a good deal of curriculum related material in the film and it works well in promoting discussion and provoking questions. Here is the official trailer.
The Derby HMD Group will seek to add value to a school screening, by facilitating access to an individual who arrived in Britain on the Kindertransports, to create an online Q&A session. How we do this is going to depend on the level of response from schools – if there are a small number a live Q&A may be possible, but if the response is significant, as we hope it will be, then we can encourage questions to be collated and responded to in a video that can then be distributed to all those schools that submit questions. As with the viewing of the film, this can be shown at a time to suit each school.
We write now to ask you to decide if you would like to take part in this initiative, so we can gauge response and contact our Q&A participant.
Please give this your consideration and get back to us by the Friday 26 November if you wish to take part.
In the first instance, please e-mail jobpob@talk21.com if you are interested.
Philip O’Brien – Derby HMD Planning Group Co-ordinator