Occupation film scriptwriter to be memorial day speaker

Occupation film scriptwriter to be memorial day speaker

Jenny Lecoat is the great-niece of Louisa Gould, who was sent to a concentration camp for harbouring an escaped Russian slave worker. She died in the gas chambers of Ravensbrück in 1945, two months before the camp was liberated.

Ms Lecoat was screenwriter for Another Mother’s Son, which starred Jenny Seagrove as Mrs Gould and former Boyzone singer Ronan Keating as her brother, Harold Le Druillenec. He helped her and was also sent into the concentration system, surviving Belsen to return home.

Before turning to scriptwriting in 1994, Ms Lecoat was a stand-up comic and then an actress, appearing in EastEnders and Doctors. She also teaches scriptwriting, working with deaf writers and actors.

This year’s national theme set by the Holocaust Memorial Trust is ‘Torn from Home’. The chairman of the HMD Jersey Organising Committee, Doug Ford, says it is highly relevant for the stories of the 21 Islanders.

He said: ‘This year’s theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘‘Torn from Home’’, and for the hundreds of Islanders shipped out into the harsh prison system of occupied Europe, and especially the 21 whose deaths are commemorated on the Lighthouse Memorial, this was their reality.

‘Today, we can view the events of 1940–45 with the benefit of hindsight but for those caught up in them, they did not know what was to come next – to put it simply, they were ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times’.

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place on 27 January to mark the anniversary of the liberation of the camps at Auschwitz in Poland. The Jersey ceremony focuses on the 21 Island victims who are commemorated on the Lighthouse Memorial on the New North Quay and has been held since 2001.

Previous speakers include Holocaust survivor Sami Stiegmann, Beirut hostage and author Brian Keenan and Michael Portillo, whose father fought on the Spanish Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. This year’s ceremony is due to begin at 12 pm in the Occupation Tapestry Gallery of the Maritime Museum on the New North Quay and will be followed by a wreath-laying ceremony, led by the Lieutenant-Governor, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton. Wreaths will also be laid by the Bailiff, Sir William Bailhache, Chief Minister John Le Fondré, faith leaders, the LGBTQ+ community and relatives of the Jersey 21.

Anyone wishing to attend is asked to arrive no later than 11.30 am.

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