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Cambodian Survivor at Holocaust Memorial

Wednesday January 22 2025

Sokphal Din


A survivor of the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s will be the guest speaker at the Civic Commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day in Edinburgh on Monday January 27.

Sokphal Din, who was 14 when the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia in 1975, survived several hard labour camps in the Killing Fields, although many of his relatives and friends were among the genocide’s two million victims. He will tell the story of how he and his family fought starvation and the constant threat of violence to eventually escape the regime together.

Holocaust Memorial Day is marked each year on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in 1945. It commemorates the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, victims of Nazi persecution in other groups of as well as the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

The Edinburgh event, organised by Edinburgh Interfaith Association (EIFA), is at the City Chambers, beginning at 10am.

In addition to Sokhpal, the Director of Education at Auschwitz Memorial and Museum in Poland will speak in a special video address about how they are commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz–Birkenau.

Rabbi David Rose of Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation will recite the memorial prayer in memory of all victims and then wreaths shall be placed at the War Memorial in front of City Chambers.  Rafi Brodkin, a leader of the Jewish Students on Campus at the University of Edinburgh, will share a personal story about his family and their holocaust experience  before joining the Lord Provost and Christiane Hullmann, the Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Scotland, in laying their wreaths.

Professor Joe Goldblatt, co–chair of the EIFA, thanked Edinburgh’s Lord Provost, the Right Honourable Robert Aldredge, for once again hosting the annual event within the City Chambers.  He said: “The City of Edinburgh’s support for this event has been constant since the beginning and it reminds us that every citizen has a responsibility to remember these horrific atrocities and to work together to ensure they never recur.”


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