My reflection on LGBT+ History Month - By Hal Maitland-Jones

Hello! My name’s Hal and I’ve been volunteering with the Anne Frank Trust UK for a couple of months now in their office in London. 

So what brought me here? Well I am very interested in history, and I think that learning more about it can feed our curiosity about the world around us. Through it, we can learn about the complex lives of other people who we might never meet but can still feel close to.  

As well as this, learning about the past gives us the opportunity to reflect on some of the very worst of humanity's mistakes, and preserving and sharing this knowledge is a deeply powerful tool to combat prejudice and discrimination in the modern day.   

For these reasons I’m especially passionate the Anne Frank Trust’s work to educate and empower young people using some of these tools, and I’ve been having a lovely time getting to know some of the great people putting their time and hard work into this great cause.   

In the coming months we’re hoping to share more short blogs, hearing from a whole range of people in the ‘Anne Frank Trust Community’, as they share their thoughts on a range of topics relevant to the work of the Anne Frank Trust.

Stay tuned for more! 

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Learning from Anne Frank and the Holocaust, at the Anne Frank trust we educate and empower young people aged 9 – 15 to challenge all forms of prejudice. Our anti-discrimination school workshops enable deeper discussion of issues of prejudice affecting young people today including antisemitism, islamophobia, racism, homophobia and transphobia.  

This month we’d like to remember the importance of educating ourselves about LGBT+ history, both through celebrating the lives of individuals and through remembering landmark events in the struggle for LGBT+ rights in the UK.  Today we’d like to have a look at and celebrate the life of Lionel Blue, the first out gay Rabbi in the UK and a regular contributor to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day for many years.    

Lionel Blue (6 February 1930 – 19 December 2016) 

(Photograph: Sarah Lee / The Guardian) 

A celebrated and respected religious figure in the UK, Lionel Blue was born in the East End of London to Jewish parents of Russian descent. He was raised by his parents and grandmother and was later evacuated to various families in the south of England during the war. He was ordained as a Rabbi in 1960 and began his media career in 1967 with BBC Radio 4.  

Characterised by his ‘gentle’ good humour and wry but curious outlook on life, his work on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day (usually delivered by him at 8am on Mondays) aimed to ‘give people a reason to get up and face the day by offering enough spiritual stiffening not to dive back under the duvet’, as he told an interviewer in 2004.  

We’re also very proud to talk about the work of Jewish charity Keshet UK, who have been working since 2012 to educate about and advocate for LGBT+ people in Jewish spaces in the UK. They have aimed to work in partnership with different communities to identify their goals, then tailor the support they provide accordingly. In their own words, there goal is to ‘create a world where no one is forced to choose between their LGBT+ and Jewish identity.’ Take a look at their website to read more about this brilliant charity.  Click here: Keshet UK 

This year’s theme for LGBT+ History month is ‘Science and Medicine’, chosen to highlight and honour the LGBT+ people working in Healthcare and Scientific research, and to educate young people about the myriad of different professions that many different LGBT+ people have been successful in. Here’s a link to the Proud Trust’s website, where you can download a free Resource and Information pack all about this year’s theme. Click here: The Proud Trust