Since 2005, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day has been marked on the 27th of January in memory of the 6 million Jews who perished in the holocaust. With this in mind, Strathmore University, the Embassy of Israel in Kenya, the Centre for International & Security Affairs (CISA) and Know Your World Initiative (KYWI) hosted a commemoration event ahead of the Remembrance Day. Speakers shared their family experiences related to the holocaust, lessons learnt from this and discussed how the youth can prevent such atrocities. Participants later had an interactive roundtable session with representatives from the San Francisco delegation of young Jewish leaders.

Eyal David, the Deputy Ambassador of Israel in Nairobi, said, “It is a tradition to have an event about a week to the Remembrance Day and we chose to have it here at Strathmore University.”

There was a story of hope in humanity which was narrated by one of the speakers. Her family, originally from Bulgaria where there were 48,000 Jewish people at the time, escaped death after the citizens of the country protested and prevented Jews, already in trucks destined to camps, from being sent to the gas chambers.

Dr. Isaac Rutenberg, Director of Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT), and Dr. George Njenga, Dean of the Strathmore University Business School, both reiterated the need to avoid hate and domination so that goodness prevails.

The victims were honoured by a minute of silence after which there was a screening of the documentary, the Final Solution, that had holocaust survivors detail their experiences in concentration camps.

UN representative, Mr. Newton Kanhema, United Nations Information Centre Deputy Director, pointed out that humankind seemingly has failed to learn from history. He added that because of this, there is need to raise awareness among young people because the future is in their hands and they decide whether to take the world to a better place or back to negativity and hatred.

 

This article was written by Jade Makory and Wambui Gachari.

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