The aim of the exhibition is to teach people, especially the young, to respect and tolerate one another and to stamp out the discrimination and hatred which led to the holocaust during the Second World War.

Lieutenant Governor Vice Admiral Sir Paul Haddacks performed the official opening honours following a moving collection of song, readings and the story of guest speaker Herbert Levy, who was in the Rushen internee camp in Port Erin.

Mr Levy, now 80, had travelled to the Isle of Man with his wife Lilian from his home in London. This was the second time the German-born actor had revisited the Isle of Man, as he had also attended the Island of Barbed Wire exhibition in 1993.

St German's Cathedral was silent as Islanders listened to his compelling story of being a 10-year-old Jewish boy on the Isle of Man during the war.

After four months in the Rushen camp, Mr Levy was sent to a London internee camp until the end of the war.

He later joined the British Army, became a stage actor and then spent 15 years as the principal guide for the Anne Frank and You exhibition. The exhibition has since been developed and is now an interactive experience without the need for tour guides.

During the evening, head boy of Queen Elizabeth II High School Simon Lynch also delivered a breathtaking rendition of the song Hallelujah and the Manx Voices performed a repertoire including Lean on Me by Bill Withers.

Lucy Naish, the exhibition's Manx youth patron, and Vida Manuel, youth president of Kasapi Filipino Association of the Isle of Man, read extracts from the Diary of Anne Frank and Queen Elizabeth II head girl Susie Brunswick read We Remember Them by Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Riemer. The evening ended with a Hebrew prayer read by Carol Jempson of the Isle of Man Jewish Community.

The free exhibition, based in Corrin Hall, has travelled widely and will be open to Islanders on a daily basis throughout March.
It will be open between 9.30am and 5.30pm, except on Sundays when it will open from 11.30am to 5.30pm.

Group visits for a minimum of 15 people can be arranged by contacting Catherine Quirk on 840242.

You can order copies of these pictures, and more, by visiting www.photostoday.co.uk

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Herbert tells of escaping Nazis

WHEN Herbert Levy was 10 years old, he spent a summer in the Bradda Glen holiday camp in Port Erin.

It was 1939 and he was a Second World War Jewish internee sent to the Isle of Man with his mother and many other 'alien enemies' in Britain.

Although his Manx days were spent at school with German nuns, watching the Wizard of Oz at the cinema and enjoying the view from Bradda Glen, the turmoil and terror other Jewish people were experiencing in Europe at that time hung over him like a suppressive black cloud.

This week, at the opening of the Anne Frank and You exhibition in Peel, the 80-year-old told Islanders of his journey from Hitler's Berlin, to being an internee in the Isle of Man and then becoming a free British national.

The guest speaker started his story by saying: 'Anne Frank was born five weeks before me, so in different circumstances you might have seen an old lady here talking to you. I was very lucky to escape, but only after spending six long years under the Nazi regime.

'I believed I was a second-class citizen. Not able to do what young boys should do — being able to play with neighbouring children, being able to go to the local swimming pool, the park or the cinema. The Nazis believed there was such a thing as an Aryan superior race — they even had school lessons about the science of race. The Jews, gypsies and blacks were particularly considered to be the lesser races.'

He went on: 'So it was quite surprising when my aunt took a photo of me and my cousin and the photo developer put a huge print of it in his shop window saying "Two beautiful Aryan children". So you see the stupidity. These people couldn't even tell the difference themselves.'

He also recalled again being mistaken for an Aryan boy and being pushed to the front of a crowd watching Hitler leave the 1936 Berlin Olympics. As a six-year-old, he then had to decide whether to hail the leader as he passed by in a limousine.

It was illegal not to hail the Führer, but it was also illegal for Jews to hail him.

The confused little boy decided to raise his arm up and so was able to return unnoticed to his fretting mother without incurring any consequences.

He told his audience how the situation subsequently grew worse for Jews in Germany — that his ill 86-year-old grandfather was arrested and probably died within months of capture. Meanwhile his flat had rubbish and faeces pushed through the letter box.

He said: 'We tried to leave Germany for a long time but other countries just wouldn't have us. But after Kristallnacht, the night the synagogues were smashed, Britain agreed to take Jewish children on a kindertransport train and I was one of those children who came over.

'I was lucky because so many children couldn't get away. In my Jewish school in Berlin there were more than 30 children. Only three of us came to Britain and I'm not sure, but I can only think the others were exterminated.'

He found two of his classmates' names on a list of people killed in camps. They were 13 when they died.

He made it safely to London and, luckily, his parents arrived the following year, just days before the war started.

The family lived peacefully in London as refugees until Winston Churchill decided to put all German and Austrian 'aliens' into internment camps. Mr Levy and his mother were therefore arrested and sent to the Isle of Man.

His father had been taken away several weeks before and they didn't know where to. It turned out he was in Onchan the whole time that they were in Port Erin. When I arrived in Douglas, a very strange thing happened,' he said. 'We got off the boat and a crowd of people were shouting: "Bloody Germans! Bloody Nazis!"

'Just a few months ago I'd been a "bloody Jew" and now I was a "bloody Nazi".

'They didn't realise we were refugees fleeing the Nazis.'

After making the journey on the steam train to Port Erin, Mr Levy spent most of his summer at a school taught by German nuns, putting on plays, eating in the dining hall and sharing a room with his mother. He said: 'I had a happy time. It was a beautiful summer and we were able to move around Port Erin freely. In fact, I went to the cinema for the first time there and I saw Wizard of Oz.'

But he added: 'Most of us were refugees, but some prisoners were actually Nazis. And as everyone thought Hitler was going to invade at any moment, we saw those people being very happy and awaiting freedom, whereas for us we were like sitting ducks, all the Jews rounded up together and waiting for Hitler to find us.'

After four months he and his mother were sent back to London 'just in time for the Blitz!' They were kept confined in a girl's boarding school in Wandsworth but were eventually released and began their life again settling in London and becoming British citizens.

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