Leicester remembers campaigner for interfaith understanding

One family’s efforts to highlight the horrors of the holocaust will be honoured at a series of events at the University in honour of Leicester campaigner Sara Elkes.

Sara Elkes, who died on 8 September 2015, will have been known to many people in Leicester for her work with the Elkhanan Association for Inter-Community Understanding. Her Inter-Faith Work Camps in Leicester attracted wide attention among Jewish and non-Jewish groups alike. 

The Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is organising two lectures in her memory.

The Lecture in Honour of Sara Elkes on Tuesday 5 November is entitled ‘Dance on the Razor’s Edge: Criminality and Law in the Ghettos during the Holocaust’ and will take place at 6.30pm in Ken Edwards Building Lecture Theatre 3. It will discuss an important aspect of the work of the Jewish communities in the Eastern European ghettos under the direct control of the German SS.  It will be delivered by Dr Svenja Bethke, a newly appointed member of the Department of History.

On 10 November, Emeritus Professor Aubrey Newman will deliver a lecture in memory of Sara Elkes, also in Ken Edwards Building Lecture Theatre 3, at 7.30pm on the subject of ‘The Elkes Family’ and more specifically honouring her father Elkhanan and mother Miriam Elkes as well as her brother Joel.