A SURVIVOR of the Auschwitz death camp has slammed a City of York Council decision to slash funding towards the city’s Holocaust Memorial Day.

Eugene Black, 83, said he felt “hurt and bewildered” by what seemed to him and many other people a disproportionate cut in what was already a small budget for the event.

The authority has decided to cut funding for the annual event from £5,000 to £1,000 as part of its drive to cut spending.

But Mr Black, who was the guest speaker at York’s first Holocaust Memorial Day three years ago, said: “The message this gives to our members, survivors of the death and concentration camps, those who sought refuge in Yorkshire from the Kindertransport and those who were hidden and survived is that their efforts to help today’s generation understand better how genocide occurs mean nothing. We understand the need to reduce budgets, but to reduce it by 80 per cent when no other budget appears to have been targeted in this way is disproportionate and we wonder why.”

Mr Black, who lives in Wharfedale, is a member of the Leeds-based Holocaust Friendship Association, a charity whose members devote much of their time to passing on their experiences of the Holocaust, teaching a new generation of the ultimate outcome of racism, and working to ensure the past does not repeat itself.

Mr Black said the association had been working with York council over the past three years to help shape the event.

“By this disproportionate targeted action of a 80 per cent budget cut, the council is giving out a message of ‘no hope’ for community cohesion,” he said. “The negative impact this has on York’s reputation is incalculable.

“It will not have escaped people’s attention that Clifford’s Tower in York was the scene of a Jewish massacre and this is in part why York’s disproportionate cut of budget is so very insensitive.”

Council leader Andrew Waller said: “Holocaust Memorial Day has been marked in York each year since 2006, and I have been there when there were just a handful of people at Clifford’s Tower. It has grown rapidly over the last three years and will be as large a Civic Event next year as it was this year.

“On top of the council officer time that is invested into organising the event each year more partners get involved and provide external funding and help in kind. With the continued support through the Civic Events budget there should be every confidence in the continued success and widescale engagement with the event in the future.”