Blue Apple Theatre Company have produced a new film to mark Memorial Holocaust Day.
While the Holocaust is remembered rightly as an act of genocide against Europe’s Jewish population, the Nazis also sent close to 250,000 people with disabilities to their deaths. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust have information about the treatment of disabled people and the T4 programme, on their website here.
Blue Apple Theatre’s documentary can be viewed here. It talks about progress, how societies change, the role of remembering and the dangers of badging and labelling people.
It’s plea that we all stay in the light, and no one slips to the shadowy edges, paints an optimistic picture of life for learning disabled people today. I wish these fulfilling lives were available to all learning disabled people, and it is a powerful reminder of what is possible.
Blue Apple Theatre Company, are artists in residence at Winchester University. They made the film, with the support of two third year Film Production students, Hope Lines and Vasili Evangelou, who edited the documentary.

In the film, images of concentration camps are contrasted with modern ones demonstrating that many people learning disabilities today live rich and rewarding lives.
Richard Conlon, Blue Apple’s Artistic Director, said: “It is important to acknowledge this terrible time from history and to remember but we must also recognise that we have moved on. We live in much more enlightened times but we shouldn’t assume that will always be the case and we must remain vigilant.”
It is three minutes of positivity and hope, a powerful use of music, images and voices.
“This better future did not come by accident, or by luck, but by will, by struggle and it will not stay by accident”.
The film is available to watch here and there is Easy Read information about it here.