The theme of Holocaust Memorial Day for 2026 was ‘Bridging Generations’, designed as a reminder of the role of younger generations to keep learning and remembering. For the third year in a row, the Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre held a special event to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. The role of this was to support schools in their own Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations, and to generally tie in with Holocaust education in secondary schools.
The event was held on Wednesday 21st January 2026, with forty-five pupils plus ten teachers from seven secondary schools in attendance. These schools came from six different local authority areas – East Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire, Edinburgh, Glasgow, East Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire.
The event began with a tour of Garnethill Synagogue. Pupils then viewed the timeline display of ‘Scotland a Sanctuary’, and were able to explore the Refugee Story learning kits as well as view digitised archival material on iPads. In the Jacobs Room, Harvey Kaplan from the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre showed pupils some original material from the collection, including Kindertransport travel documents, ID cards, passports and photographs.
After a break, the rest of the event was focused on hearing from two second-generation speakers. Videos of these talks will be added to the Centre’s resource, ‘Their Stories and Ours’, which is based around the testimonies of second-generation Holocaust survivors. This currently includes the videos of speakers from the 2025 event, along with notes for teachers.
Susan Hodgins spoke about her mother Dorrith Sim (Oppenheim), who came to Scotland on the Kindertransport as a child, born in Kassel, Germany. Dorrith was 7 years old when her parents, Hans and Trude took her to the Hamburg Railway Station and waved a tearful goodbye. Dorrith stayed with Fred and Sophie Gallimore in Edinburgh, and made her home in Scotland, following the death of her parents in Auschwitz. In later life, Dorrith married and moved to Ayrshire, where she had five children.
Philip Rodney told the story of his father Wolfgang Rimalower born Leipzig, Germany. After getting involved in an argument following a car accident it was decided Wolfgang should leave Germany to go to an aunt in Switzerland in a fear of being deported. Wolfgang was refused entry to Switzerland; he fled to Italy but he returned 2 weeks later to his aunt’s, where he was caught by immigration officers.
Wolfgang was turned away at many embassies and eventually received a British visa after a mysterious family friend vouched for him. He was encouraged to change his name to Peter Rodney to disguise his German heritage in case of capture whilst serving in the army.
Following the talks, the pupils and teachers had the chance to ask questions about the speakers and their parents’ stories. They were also able to speak to Susan and Philip directly, and view items belonging to Dorrith which had been brought out of the archive for the event.
At the end of the event, students completed feedback forms about the event. Of the 33 pupils that filled out the forms, only 5 out of 33 pupils said they were ‘quite’ knowledgeable about the experience of Holocaust survivors before attending the event. However, all 33 said they were ‘quite’ or ‘very’ knowledgeable after the event. Our speakers were particularly impressed with the pupils’ questions and thoughtful responses to their parent’s stories of survival. We can always count an event like this a great success when all the pupils responded positively that they would like to attend an event like this again!
The event wasn’t just a success with pupils; the teachers also all positively filled out their feedback forms. We asked how they planned to use the information from the event back at school, with some responding they’ll be “adding Jewish Heritage resources into curriculum planning” and “using the speaker’s personal stories in future lessons and school resources”.
We are so grateful to Susan and Philip for joining us to share very moving, personal stories. We know from previous years how impactful this event is for the students who attend, and we really appreciated their participation and thoughtful questions. Seeing items from the archives and hearing from the speakers really helps to make the event memorable and give a very direct connection with this period of history.
Photos (c) Mirrorbox Photography
