Professor Lawrence Goldman, a leading historian and representative of the Norwich Hebrew Congregation, has launched an extraordinary attack on Lowestoft Town Council, which held the commemoration, saying it had "appropriated" Jewish suffering.

A reflective speech was given by Professor Lawrence Goldman, emeritus fellow in history at St Peter’s College, Oxford, at East Coast Cinema in Lowestoft. Picture: Mick Howes (Image: Mick Howes)

In a letter of complaint to the authority, he wrote: "Our culture was appropriated by councillors and others: Jews were not heard in front of a large audience.

"I must ask you why you bothered to hold this event if you were not sincere in your sympathy for Jewish loss?"

An event was held at Lowestoft railway station - where hundreds of Jewish children rescued by the Kindertransport operation arrived in 1938 - on Monday, Holocaust Memorial Day.

The date remembers the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War.

This year's commemorations were particularly poignant as they fell on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the concentration camp at the centre of the Nazi campaign to eradicate Europe's Jewish population.

Prof Goldman, emeritus fellow in history at St Peter’s College in Oxford, has written to Lowestoft Town Council calling for it to apologise to the Norwich Hebrew Congregation, the nearest synagogue to the town.

Prof Lawrence Goldman delivering his talk at East Coast Cinema in Lowestoft as part of Holocaust Memorial Day. Picture: Lowestoft Town Council (Image: Lowestoft Town Council)

The group had been invited to be part of the town's opening event on Monday, at East Coast Cinema.

But Prof Goldman said it was much smaller, and that representatives should also have been involved in........

© Eastern Daily Press