Mayor of Oxford talks about his family escaping Holocaust

Every year on 27 January we remember the millions of people who were murdered in the Holocaust and in the genocides around the world that followed.

For the Lord Mayor of Oxford James Fry, who is Jewish and has Polish ancestry, the service has deep significance.

READ MORE: Jewish couple survived Holocaust and started life together in England

He said: "This is an occasion to remember a horror, whose enormity we can hardly comprehend."

Mr Fry's father was born in Lublin in Poland but found sanctuary in England and eventually became the first Professor of General Practice at Oxford University.

Soon after the occupation of the Lublin, the Germans established a ghetto and a labour camp.

His family had managed to leave the country by then but had already experienced discrimination.

He said: “They left partly because my father's father and some of the uncles were trying to be doctors and it was very difficult for Jews to get to the universities they wanted.

"And when they finally went to medical school they had to stand up at the back, they were not allowed a seat.

“They got out of the country in the 20s or early 30s but of course a lot of them did not get out. Lots of uncles and aunts got killed in the war.

"My father’s cousin, the one member of my father’s generation who did not leave Poland survived the war and eventually came to England, thanks to the Red Cross contacting her uncle here.

"But it's only when people get old that they are willing to talk about it."

Mr Fry took his family, including his grandchildren, to Poland in 2008.

He said: "I had lots of addresses literally scribbled down on prescription pads of where my parents lived and we went there and we were able to find all the different houses they had lived in.

“What was interesting was right next to one of the last houses they lived in was a little stone monument that listed the names of the various places around there that people were being murdered.

"Krepiec was where I believe that at first they were taken to the woods and shot and their bodies burnt before the Nazis built Majdanek extermination camp not far from Krepiec and closer to Lublin.

"The Majdanek extermination camp gradually acquired a vast size. The gas chambers and the four crematoria were working day and night."

The dissolution of the Majdanek camp began towards the end of 1943.

In 1944, when the Russians arrived and all the SS personnel were hanged.

Mr Fry travelled to Lublin in 2008 and took a picture of himself with a grandson outside the last house he knew his grandfather had lived in.

"I did the trip as much as anything so the grandchildren would be aware of what happened and where the family had come from," he said.

Friday's service will show an interview with Leslie Spiro filmed in the Lord Mayor's chamber.

Mr Spiro's father Harry was one of 'The Windermere Children' whose story is told in an emotional 2020 film.

The 305 Jewish orphans survived the Second World War but arrived at Lake Windermere with nothing and no one.

The theme of this year's Holocaust Memorial Day is 'Ordinary People', to highlight how ordinary people let genocide happen, perpetrate genocide and those ordinary people who are persecuted.

Mr Fry said: "The number of people exterminated by the Nazis ran to many millions, with all too many ordinary people acquiescing in the slaughter being undertaken in their name.  

“Holocaust Memorial Day reminds us of the famous poem by Martin Niemöller: ‘First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist.

"Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist.

"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.

"Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.’”

The service will take place on Friday 27 January at 11am in the Assembly Room, Oxford Town Hall. Members of the public are welcome to attend.

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This story was written by Miranda Norris, she joined the team in 2021 and covers news across Oxfordshire as well as news from Witney.

Get in touch with her by emailing: Miranda.Norris@newsquest.co.uk. Or find her on Twitter: @Mirandajnorris

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