KAREN POLLOCK TALK. CHAIRED BY SAVILIAN DAVID LEWIS.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, starting a chain of horrendous events that would lead to the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children. The Holocaust did not start with Hitler or the gas chambers of Europe and it did not end with the liberation of the camps.

Anti-Jewish racism, the oldest hatred, had existed for two millennia. And today, we are violently reminded that that hatred still exists.

On 7th October 2023, the terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas in Israel led to the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust with over 1,200 people murdered, over 200 taken hostage, and scores more violently assaulted, injured, and traumatised. In the hours after the attack, posts started appearing on social media celebrating this appalling and inhumane assault; antisemitism in the days and weeks after rose exponentially; and across the world we have seen Jewish people targeted online and on our streets.

While the language and the methods of distributing antisemitism may have changed, its essence has not.

Karen Pollock CBE is the Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust. She started her professional life working for the Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism (PCAA), where she became Director. She joined the Holocaust Educational Trust as Communications Director in 1998 and became the Trust’s Chief Executive in 2000.

She was a founding Trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and is a member of the Council of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust Council at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. She is a Vice President of the Jewish Leadership Council, a trustee of the Community Security Trust and an Advisor to the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation.

In 2012 Karen was awarded an MBE for her services to education in the UK. In 2020, she was awarded a CBE for services to Holocaust education.