Former NHS consultant with personal memories of the Holocaust is honoured by the University of Leicester

One of the dwindling number of people with personal memories of the Holocaust has been honoured by the University of Leicester.

Dr Martin Stern MBE, who had a 42-year career as an NHS consultant with University Hospitals of Leicester, has devoted much of his life to educating people about what he saw and experienced between 1939 and 1945.

His achievements were recognised with an honorary Doctorate of Laws, which Dr Stern accepted at a graduation ceremony held at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, today (Tuesday 14 July).

Born in Hilversum in the Netherlands in 1938 to German refugees, Dr Stern lived just a few streets away from Anne Frank until 1943, when he was sent, with his one-year-old sister, to the Theresienstadt ghetto near Prague, a transit camp from which thousands of Jews were transported to death camps.

After the liberation, he returned to the Netherlands before moving to the UK in 1950, becoming a British citizen four years later. Dr Stern attended Manchester Grammar School then studied Animal Physiology at Brasenose College, Oxford, to which he later added an MSc in Immunology from the University of Birmingham.

Dr Stern, who used to live in Oadby, worked for many years at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust as a Consultant Clinical Immunologist, retiring in 2002. From the mid-1980s onwards, he has been closely involved with the Midlands Asthma and Allergy Research Association and he set up the Leicester Children’s Allergy Service, based at Leicester Royal Infirmary, in 1987.

Since retirement, Dr Stern has been very active in preserving and disseminating the story of the Holocaust, from his own personal experience. He gives frequent talks at the National Holocaust Centre and Museum in Nottinghamshire and is an Honorary Associate Member of the University’s Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He was awarded an MBE in 2018 for his work in Holocaust education.

Alongside his important historical work, Martin’s interest in immunology remains undiminished. In 2024 he was involved with the launch of the Swisens Poleno sampler which provides real-time pollen counts from atop the University’s George Davies Centre.

Dr Stern said: “I am deeply honoured to be offered an honorary degree by the University of Leicester, with which I have had a 42 year relationship as NHS consultant at the University Hospitals of Leicester.

“In particular, I witnessed the founding by Professor Aubrey Newman of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide studies, the first such centre in any British university. I remain a member of the centre.

“With the help of hundreds of Leicestershire volunteer clinical trial patients we helped to develop safer antihistamines, preventing road deaths, and funded staff to introduce aerobiology at the University. Classical music at the University has been a joy and led to wonderful friendships and I remain grateful for the support from members of University staff throughout my career.”

President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, Professor Nishan Canagarajah, said: “I am truly humbled to be able to pay tribute to Dr Stern.

“His four decades of dedication to the health and wellbeing of the people of Leicester and wider region, though his work with the NHS, cannot be underestimated. Nor can his determination to provide significant health services to local children, after single-handedly setting up the Leicester Children’s Allergy Service, which has gone on to expand significantly at the Leicester Royal Infirmary.

“He has, of course, devoted much of his life to Holocaust education, and many of our criminology students have travelled to hear him speak at the National Holocaust Centre and Museum. His first-hand accounts of life as a Holocaust survivor have inspired our students to challenge antisemitism and to recognise the corrosive impacts of all forms of prejudice. He is a true Citizen of Change.”