A LEADING North-East clergyman has a special reason for taking part in a Holocaust Memorial Day event tomorrow.

Durham Cathedral will hold a vigil for the victims of genocide, including the Nazis’ attempt to wipe out the Jewish population of occupied Europe during the Second World War and atrocities in places such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda.

The theme is “stand up to hatred” and it has added significance for the cathedral’s dean, the Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove, because his mother was a German Jew.

She escaped the fate inflicted on many others by Hitler’s regime because her family managed to send her to safety in Britain before the start of the war.

As persecution of the Jews intensified, Dorothee Lyser’s parents arranged for their daughter, then a teenager, and their son, Karl, to leave their Dusseldorf home and start new lives in the South of England.

By coincidence, Karl was accompanied on his voyage by Wilhelm Levison, who was a German professor of history at Durham University.

The youngsters’ parents survived the war, fleeing Germany to the Dutch town of Edam, where they went underground when Holland fell to the Nazis. Others they knew were not so lucky.

“My uncle, who was serving with the British Army, drove his tank into Edam and asked if anyone knew where his parents were and, miraculously, they were there,” said the dean.

“Like many people, my grandparents, who were very assimilated, very proud to be German, thought that when Hitler came to power it was a temporary fit of madness.”

Dean Sadgrove said religion played little part in his own upbringing because his father was a “lapsed Anglican”, but his own faith started to develop after he joined a choir as a boy.

He said he believes Holocaust Memorial Day is vital, not just for looking back to the horrors of the 1939 to 1945 conflict.

“Genocide has remained a terrible fact of death. Holocaust Memorial Day is designed to be accessible to people of many different backgrounds.

“We want to help people remember genocide and help them to be vigilant against the forces of discrimination that lead to it. It is a prayer to build a fairer society,” he said.

“I think it is especially important that we remember what happened and make sure it never happens again.”

The vigil will be held from 6.15pm to 7pm and all are welcome.