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return to headline pageHannah Lessing event
The AJR, together with the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Austrian Ambassador, Dr Gabriele Matzner-Holzer, were delighted to welcome Hannah Lessing, General Secretary of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria, who spoke at event at the residence of the Austrian Ambassador.
Speaking at the event, Ms LEssing said, "‘It is one of the biggest challenges to teach the younger generation about the loss in culture and humanity – to make them aware of what we are capable of doing
to others, in the hope that the words ‘Never again’ will have some meaning,’ Hannah Lessing told a crowded meeting of the AJR and the Anglo-Jewish Association together with the Austrian Ambassador, Dr Gabriele
Matzner-Holzer.
Ms Lessing, General Secretary of the Austrian National Fund and Head of the Austrian delegation at the Task Force for International Co-operation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, was speaking at the Residence of the Ambassador of the Republic of Austria in London.
The Austrian National Fund subsidised a great variety of projects, she said. It is thanks in part to support from the Fund that there will be an Austrian Refugee Voices project comprising a film, a book and an exhibition focusing on the lives of former refugees from Austria.
‘Most of the Jewish victims live today in the USA, Israel and Great Britain – some as far away as Malawi, Zambia and Thailand,’ Hannah Lessing said. She added: ‘We fully understand that the symbolic ompensation payment to victims of the Nazis has been received with disappointment. At the same time, these measures show that a new generation of Austrians is recognising the victims of their country’s terrible past and at least attempting to compensate that which cannot be compensated.’
‘A survivor put it most succinctly, 'she concluded, ‘Everyone always asks how we died – no one ever asks how we lived.’
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