Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances this event has been postponed.
We will let you know the new event details as soon as we can.
Please join us for a very special event on Wednesday 16th November during Interfaith Week. This event will explore the importance why faith communities need to work together so that the horrors of the Holocaust can never happen again. In conversation with Dr Agnes Kaposi MBE, Scott Saunders MBE, Professor Jhutti-Johal and Lara Calmonson on the importance of passing the torch of Holocaust memory to new generations and communities.
Dr Agnes Kaposi MBE
Agnes Kaposi was born in Hungary the year before Hitler came to power and started school at the outbreak of World War II. The Holocaust killed many of her family, together with half a million Hungarian Jews, but a series of miracles and coincidences allowed her to survive. She worked as child labourer in the agricultural and armament camps of Austria and was liberated by a rampaging Soviet army. She struggled through post-war hardship to re-enter Hungarian society, only to be caught up for a decade in the vice of Stalinism. In 1956 a bloody revolution offered the opportunity to escape to Britain, a country of freedom and tolerance, where she started a family and built a career as an engineer. Dr Agnes Kaposi was the third woman Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Churchill Fellow.
A copy of Agnes’ book is available to purchase via our website (option to collect at the event) and will also be available to buy on the day.
Professor Jagbir Jhutti-Johal
Dr Jhutti-Johal has been teaching Sikh Studies at the University of Birmingham for over 22 years and focuses on interfaith relations and dialogue, but also issues of equality, Sikh identity in the diasporic community, racialization and mistaken identity and other contested issues that confront the Sikh community nationally and globally. She is a firm advocate for the importance of the public sphere engaging with faith, and her work in the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion particularly looks at public policy, social and political engagement issues as they affect and are effected by the British Sikh community.
This is demonstrated by work outside of the University. She was Commissioner on The Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life (CORAB), convened in 2013 by The Woolf Institute, was a member of the Sikh Roundtable for the Government Covid-19 Places of Worship Taskforce. Currently she is a steering group member on the UK Freedom of Religion or Belief Forum, and an International Panel Member for the OSCE/ODIHR on FORB. She is board member and trustee on a number of organisations, such as Faiths for the Climate and Race Equality Foundation. A Layperson on Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Women’s Network and very involved in interfaith work and voluntary work within the community, especially around women and children’s issues. She is also a presenter on the Thought for the Day segment on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Scott Saunders MBE
Scott worked in the finance world in London, New York, Tokyo and Japan for 30 years. During his time abroad he was heavily involved in the Jewish Communities in Asia. After discovering he had been sat next to a recipient of a Sugihara visa in synagogue he took an interest in learning more about the Holocaust. His first trip to Poland was in 2007 where he led a group from Hong Kong on March of the Living. On his return to the UK, Scott completed a BA in History and then an MRES in Modern Jewish History with an emphasis on Holocaust Studies. He set up March of the Living UK where he has taken over 2500 people to Poland and is now the chairman of the charity.
This is a free event but tickets are necessary for entry and guest list. Exact location (within the University of Birmingham) of the evening will be sent to ticket holders the week of the event.