A SPECIAL ceremony will take place in town later this month to remember the victims of the Holocaust.

Tendring Council's chairman Jeff Bray will join members of the Colchester and District Jewish Community at the Sunken Rose Garden on Marine Parade West on January 27.

Starting at 11am, the ceremony will commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, marked every year since 2001.

It aims to promote awareness of how people and communities were persecuted under racial and social policy because they were different.

John Gottesman, chairman of the Colchester and District Jewish Community, will lead the Clacton service.

Councillor Bray said:“This ceremony gives us the opportunity to think about those who lost their lives, and those who survived, the terrible events of the Holocaust.

“In previous years we have representatives from many different religious groups come to pay their respects, and we hope that will happen again – especially as last year we were unable to hold an event due to Covid-19.”

In 2007 Tendring Council planted a commemorative white rose bush in the seafront gardens, with a special plaque set next to it the following year.

Harwich played a key role in the Kindertransport as the first stop for most of the 10,000 predominantly Jewish children rescued from Europe shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.