Friday 30 January 2015

Joe Stirling lights Holocaust candle at the Forum

On Holocaust Memorial Day, 27th January 2015, Joe Stirling lit the special Holocaust candle outside the Forum in Norwich marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp.


After lighting the candle Joe gave a short address on how his parents, Ida and Alfred were deported from Koblenz to Sobibor in 1942, where they were murdered by the Nazis. 


Joe Stirling lives in Norwich. He is 90 years old. Joe was Sheriff of Norwich in the mid 70s, pioneered a well-known and successful travel business in the 1960s and has been a serving member of Lions International for over 50 years. He is also active in the Norfolk Humanists group.

Joe was chosen to light the Norwich candle because of his extraordinary life's journey, which took him from Nazi Germany to Liverpool Street, and eventually to Norwich.

His biographer, Phyllida Scrivens writes:
Escaping Hitler: A Jewish Boy's Quest for Freedom and his Future is the story of how Joe, born Gunter Stern, fled Nazi Germany as a fourteen year old in 1939, first by attempting to walk to England across four countries - Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland - and eventually on a Kindertransport into Liverpool Street, the final train to leave Cologne. 

Escaping Hitler: A Jewish Boy's Quest for Freedom and his Future has a release date of January 2016.  Click here for the Facebook page.





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