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Showing posts from 2015

Keeping the Memory Alive

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The Holocaust workshop at the Manchester Jewish Museum will open on Tuesday In preparation for its new Holocaust educational workshop due to launch next Tuesday on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Manchester Jewish Museum opened its doors this Sunday for a preview and a commemoration talk. Rose Stanyon, the learning officer and outreach manager at the Museum opened the ceremony with a definition of the Holocaust according to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and reminded the audience about the six millions Jews that lost their lives to the cruelty of the Nazis, as well as the disabled, homosexuals, Roma and political dissidents that were equally persecuted. The Holocaust Remembrance Day has been observed since 2001 in the UK. As set by the HMD, this year’s theme for the ceremonies was “keeping the memory alive,” and so the museum decided to share the stories of three survivors who currently live in Manchester: Haim Ferster, Helen Taichner and Peter Kurer. The worksh

Je Suis Charlie 2

Today, like millions of people in the world, I walked to defend our democracies' values. I took the streets in Périgueux having decorated my bag with the words "Je Suis Charlie" especially for the occasion. This walk meant so many different things to me. People walked to honour the memory of the 17 victims of different terrorist attacks, to show the world they care, to defend freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of cult, people stood together as one in Paris and several other cities in France and the world. Today millions of people were Charlie. As well as regular citizens, 50 country representatives joined the French president, François Hollande, in Paris to show their support to France. Among them were representatives of Greece, Israel, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, the Emirates, all of which walked arm in arm in the name of Freedom of speech. All day in the press I heard no mention of the 12 Palestinian journalists who died in the last 4 weeks in

#JeSuisCharlie

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"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." – Thomas Jefferson There are times when people ask me if I’m French and I reply, half-jokingly, “don’t call me French, I’m Belgian!” I take an offended tone; I don’t want to be French. But today, I am, everyone is French, I am and everyone else is Charlie. Sitting in my mum’s house in the French countryside, we’re grieving, the tears and whisky are flowing. We are scared at the idea that there are people in this world who are willing to kill because they didn’t find a joke funny. The radio is on, we’re following the development of the events, listening to the day-long homage to the