AN MP pledged his commitment to Holocaust Memorial Day today and said the national occasion was an 'important opportunity for people from across Furness to reflect on the darkest times of European history'.

Simon Fell signed the Holocaust Educational Trust's Book of Commitment ahead of a host of commemorative events being held to honour the victims of the Holocaust.

2022 marks 77 years since the liberation of the concentration camps of Europe and the end of the Second World War. Today is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In 1945, a group of 300 youngsters, who became known as the 'Windermere Children', were brought from the horrors of Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia to reside in Cumbria. They lived in a housing scheme built at Troutbeck Bridge for aircraft workers.

Mr Fell, who represents the Barrow and Furness constituency, said: "As the Holocaust moves from living history to history, it becomes ever more important that we take the time to remember the six million Jewish victims and also pay tribute to the survivors.”

Angela Cohen, chairman of the '45 Aid Society, which was founded by a group of child Holocaust survivors, is the daughter of Moishe Malenicky, one of the Windermere Children.

“It is really important to me that people understand the story of the Holocaust and we tell the story," she said.

“If you were in Berlin in the 1930s, they were discussing gay rights, women were in parliament and there were leading scientists and businesspeople all brushing shoulders - that is what it was like then.

"Suddenly the wrong man came at the wrong time."

She said she was now seeing antisemitism 'raise its head again' and described the story of the Holocaust as 'as relevant today as it was back then'.

“That is why Holocaust Memorial Day is so important and is still going on," she said.

"I am never going to be just a bystander.

"I will tell my dad’s story in my way. It is so important to me.”

Karen Pollock CBE, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "As the Holocaust fades from living memory, it falls on all of us to ensure that their stories and the stories of the six million Jewish men, women and children brutally murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators are never forgotten.

"We all have a duty to remember the Holocaust and to stand up against antisemitism and hate, now more than ever.”