Helena Bonham Carter to serve on commission for Holocaust education

Helena Bonham Carter has joined British Prime Minister David Cameron’s new Holocaust Commission, which will serve to find ways to educate future generations about the horrors of the Holocaust. The committee, which also includes Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, senior politicians Michael Grove and Ed Balls, and others, is cross-party and multi-faith.

Yesterday’s announcement of the committee coincided with Holocaust Memorial Day, when the commissioners met with Holocaust survivors at a special reception. The Prime Minister has said of the committee’s mission:

Survivors have played a vital role in keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, but we will not always have these remarkable individuals with us. We face a real danger that, as the events of the Holocaust become ever more distant, they feel increasingly remote to current and future generations. This cross-party, national Commission representing our whole society will investigate what more needs to be done to ensure Britain has a permanent and fitting memorial and the educational resources needed for generations to come.

Bonham Carter herself, who is of Jewish descent, has said,

I am very honoured to be asked to join this commission and do so in particular memory of those members of my family who died in the Holocaust and as an inherited responsibility to my grandfather, who made a significant personal sacrifice to save hundreds of lives. It is our generation’s legacy to create a living memory that will survive the survivors and forever remind future generations of the inhumanity man is capable of committing to its own kind.

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