Holocaust survivor set to visit Violette Szabo Museum

HEREFORDSHIRE'S Violette Szabo Museum is hosting an event featuring a guest speaker who escaped a Nazi death camp as a child.

On Sunday, July 9, the 2023 Violette Szabo Day will commemorate one of the only three female winners of the George Cross in World War Two. Rosemary Rigby MBE established the Violette Szabo Museum at her home in Wormelow, which once belonged to Violette’s aunt and uncle, and has held a celebration of Violette’s life every summer for over 20 years.

Violette was an agent of the Special Operations Executive, working in occupied France. She was captured and sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she was shot aged just 23.

“All people would be welcome if they’d care to come along and join us. I am trying to keep Violette’s memory evergreen as she is a national heroine as well as here in Herefordshire. She stayed here in my house when she was a little girl. I always feel it was a happy place for her to be. She gave her life for us all at only 23. We all need to stop and think and be very aware of what has happened to wonderful people like her, to make sure this never happens again,” said Ms Rigby.

Violette Szabo was killed at Ravensbruck concentration camp (Image: Hereford Times)

A highlight of the event will be a talk from Professor Peter Lantos, who, at the age of five, was deported from his home in Hungary and imprisoned at a Nazi concentration camp, where most of his family was killed.

The museum will be selling copies of his new book The Boy Who Didn’t Want to Die, which tells the story of his journey through war-torn Europe in 1944. Professor Lantos has previously published a Holocaust memoir called Parallel Lines and a novel called Closed Horizon. He also works as a scientist and medical researcher, and in 2020 was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to Holocaust awareness.

The Violette Szabo Day will begin at 1.30pm with a highland piper and British Legion members leading a parade from the park in Wormelow, through the millennium green to the museum.

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Last year, the museum celebrated what would have been Violette’s 100th birthday in an event that was delayed by a year due to coronavirus. Ms Rigby said that around 800 people attended from all over the world, even from as far as Australia, with 100 taking part in the parade. A lot of visitors return annually for the event.

As well as Professor Lantos, the event is expected to be attended by all mayors and mayoresses in the county, as well as the mayoralty of Monmouth and deputy lord lieutenant Patrick Wrixon.

The Violette Szabo Museum showcases her incredible life, as well as telling the stories of other resistance workers and teaching visitors about Ravensbruck concentration camp.

As well as founding the museum, Ms Rigby has been the president of the Ross Action Committee since 1966 and spent 30 years of her life fundraising for the blind.