Holocaust survivors joined hundreds of people for a vigil at the National Holocaust Remembrance Center downtown London.
The candlelight commemoration took place in the Victoria Tower Gardens outside the Houses of Parliament, with six yellow candles lit by Holocaust survivors accompanied by their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Re-elected Mayor of London Sadiq Khan He was expected to attend the event on Sunday evening, but did not due to personal reasons.
Bronia Snow, 96, shared her story about leaving her parents to build a new home in Britain.
This year marks the 85th anniversary of the Kindertransport rescue operations.
A choir consisting of 115 children from Jewish primary schools performed during the candlelight vigil
A Kindertransport survivor, Kurt Marx (center), lights a candle during the memorial service in central London
Bronia Snow, 96, (left) was transported to England in 1939 and recalled in a speech how terrified she was when she arrived at her new home and left her parents behind
The humanitarian rescue operation, which ran between November 1938 and September 1939, gave 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, safe passage to Britain from Nazi-controlled territory in Europe.
Mrs. Snow arrived at the Prague train station on May 31, 1939, to find the platform “full of parents, children and armed German soldiers,” adding that she was “absolutely terrified.”
She said she got on the train and doesn't remember “talking to anyone, eating or drinking anything.”
She added: 'I felt like I was in a trance.'
She crossed the border into the Netherlands and was put on a boat to England, where she was taken to live with her mother's cousin in Hampstead, London.
“I didn't know a word of English, but luckily I had started learning German at school so I had a language I could communicate,” she added.
'Letters from my parents were grim. Jews had to wear yellow stars.'
Mrs. Snow said her parents were deported to a concentration camp in 1942 and all but one letter stopped communicating.
Her speech received a standing ovation from the audience.
Eric Pickles (pictured) is Britain's special envoy for post-Holocaust issues and spoke at the service
In a speech, Mrs. Snow recalled how her parents were sent to concentration camps and after a single letter all communication stopped. Her speech received a standing ovation
Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis (pictured) delivered a speech at the service where Holocaust survivors were joined by their families. He reiterated that anti-Semitism has increased in Britain in recent months
Referring to Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people, Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said that before that date “we could blissfully imagine and imagine that horrific Jewish suffering is something that happens at other times too.” applied to other people in other places'. , but since then 'we know it can be done here'.
He said Britain is “witnessing a worrying rise in anti-Semitism,” adding: “And it is here, week after week on the streets of London, that we are witnessing unacceptable expressions of Jew-hatred.
'But it is also here in Britain that we know we are not alone.
“We know that the vast majority of our country's citizens recognize that a threat to Jews is a threat to our entire society.
'We as a nation will always strive to ensure that we remember the lessons of the Holocaust to shape our presence and inform and inspire a better, healthier, more peaceful and safer Britain.'
Teenager Ruby Frankel from the Jewish Lads' & Girls' Brigade (JLGB) told how a British Jewish youth group helped save thousands of refugees brought to Britain from Nazi Germany, through the 'Kitchener Camp rescue' which also celebrated 85 years took place ago. year.
To mark the event, a combined male choir performed together with 115 children from Jewish primary schools.
The Holocaust was the systematic murder of European Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators starting in 1941 during World War II.