Marks targets hate crime in Shoah trust job

LAURA MARKS has begun her stint as the chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust by calling for increased educational outreach to combat rising hate crime.

The Mitzvah Day founder, who has served the trust for two years as vicechair, noted that a record 5,500 events were organised for HMD 2016.

Yet “racial tensions are running high. We are worried about intolerance. People are way too often attacked for who they are.

“There’s an enormous amount of evidence to show that particularly antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise.”

As a co-chair of Nisa Nashim — which brings Muslims and Jews together and encourages women to take on leadership roles — she understood “how uneasy Muslim women feel. Muslim women, like Orthodox Jews, are targeted more because they look different.”

She said that her most pressing issue as chair would be stressing the continuing relevance of the Shoah, especially with fewer survivors around every year to give their testimony.

“There’s nothing like hearing a sur- vivor talking about their experiences. But the Holocaust ended 71 years ago.

“There aren’t many people left who are willing and able to go round the country and talk — and certainly not enough to get to 5,500 events. That’s true of the other genocides, too . There aren’t many survivors of Rwanda or Darfur in Britain.”

The main message she wanted to get across was that “the issues surround- ing genocides repeat and repeat and repeat.

“What combines them all is people irrationally hating other people because of who they are and then finding reasons to justify their hatred, even though it is based on prejudice, not reason.”

Ms Marks’s enhanced HMDT role will not impact on her Mitzvah Day involvement.