CHRISTIAN and Jewish groups joined together to mark Holocaust Memorial Day last week.

On Friday and Saturday there was an exhbition at Brentwood Town Hall, Ingrave Road, called Heroines of the Holocaust focusing on the lives of Anne Frank and Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch Christian who hid Jews from the Nazis in her house.

The event was co-organised by Shenfield, Brentwood and Districts Synagogue and the Essex branch of Christian Friends of Israel.

Hundreds of schoolchildren were among those to learn about the genocide of Jews, and other minorities, at the exhibition, which moved to Shenfield High School, Alexander Lane, on Saturday.

Chelsey Foster, 17, from Brentwood Ursuline School said: “You hear about it but watching the film and seeing the exhibits makes it so real.“

Shirley Newbitt, 74, travelled from Witham to see the exhibition. She said: “I think it’s good that people are reminded about what happened in the war as a lot of young people don’t realise.”

On Saturday night Otto Deutsch, an Austrian Jew who survived the war by escaping on the ‘Kindertransport’ trains which evacuated Jewish children to safety in England, gave a moving talk at Shenfield High School.

He told a packed meeting about his experiences and about being the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust, having left his native country, on his own, at just 10 years of age.

Brentwood Mayor Cllr David Tee, who attended the event, lit a candle in remembrance of the six million Jews who died.