The pain and anger behind Chichester's Holocaust commemoration

Clare Apel admits she started the Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day committee partly to purge her own sadness, partly to purge her own anger.

Inevitably that sadness remains – and will probably never go away – 11 years later as she now steps down from the role of chairman.

“But I like to think we have done some good. I just hope that we have.

“I must say that some of the responses that we have had from children at our educational events at New Park over the years have been really rewarding, and that has been great. I do feel that the message perhaps is getting across, the message that we are all human beings with feelings. You can think of silly titles and names for people and you can put them together in groups but the fact is that we're all human beings and that's what matters.”

Clare, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, started the committee with her husband Ralph and with former Mayor of Chichester Martyn Bell.

“In 2015 Martyn said to me that he had been born on the day Auschwitz was liberated and he said that we should do something to commemorate that. And I said to him ‘OK, but do you know about my background and Ralph's background?’ Ralph's father lost more than 200 members of his family in the gas chambers and my dad lost between 50 and 60 members of his family.”

The conversation was the starting point for the Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day committee.

“Life with daddy was so difficult because of what happened. He was the most lovely, lovely brilliant man. His mother was Jewish. He was very clever. When he was 18 he studied to be a doctor but his father died and left them bankrupt. He had to give up medicine and support his mother and so he trained to be a journalist. He became the editor of two papers in Vienna. One was anti-Nazi and the other was a bit like The Spectator.”

When the Nazis came, inevitably the family had to escape, arriving penniless in the UK.

“At the end of the war I didn't realise but daddy had heard that all his family had been killed in the gas chambers. I remember in my youth my father was in and out of mental hospitals. He used to have awful bouts of shock treatment. I adored my father but he suffered so much because of what had happened and because of the anti-Semitism. Daddy died in Graylingwell. We had a very difficult life.

“Just after my father married my mum, he went to see his mother who he was supporting. She had put her head in the gas oven and killed herself. So his mother gassed herself and his brother and the rest of the family were put in gas ovens. I think one can understand his depression.”

Setting up the Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day committee seemed the right way to honour him and all those who suffered. Sadly since it started, the situation has deteriorated in so many ways.

“I think it is terribly sad that anti-Semitism is on the rise and that's why we have done the work that we have done. I am the child of a survivor and I've got a story to tell. But I needed to do it to purge all the anger and all the sadness out of myself for what happened. And now you see the situation today and it is so scary. At the synagogue in Hove you have to have military people to make it safe to go in. The situation is very bad.

“You have got the most appalling government in Israel. What happened on October 7 was unforgivable, and three of Ralph's brother’s family were killed but it just never stops. I do think it would be better if we had more of a middle of the road, more left wing government in Israel. The situation is terrible.

“I just hope we have done some good here.”

The time had come, though, to step down as chairman: “The worst thing you can do is drag it on and stay too long. I had wanted to go after ten years but nobody had come forth but I think the change is good and that change will be good for the committee now.”

Mark Schwarz has taken over and has paid full tribute to all that Clare has achieved.

Mark, who joined the committee around seven years ago, admitted it was both daunting and exciting to take over the reins.