A RELATIVE of one of the Nazi Holocaust’s most famous victims was guest of honour at a memorial service for the victims yesterday.

Buddy Elias, the cousin of diarist Anne Frank, has been in Kirkcaldy to help commemorate National Holocaust Day.

He was joined by hundreds of people to mark the deaths of millions of Jews persecuted during the second world war.

A series of events invoking the memory of Anne Frank and designed to confront intolerance and discrimination culminated in a torchlight peace march in Kirkcaldy last night.

The Anne Frank + You project was created by a group of Fife pupils after they visited Auschwitz in Poland and were inspired to raise the wider issues of racism and hate.

At Kirkcaldy Town House yesterday morning Mr Elias (81) described his memories of a young Anne and the impact her death has had on the world.

“We were lucky because my father got a job with a German firm in Switzerland so we didn’t have to flee, we didn’t have to hide,” he said.

“We knew of course that the Jews were being persecuted but nobody knew the scale of the murders until much later.

“Now Anne is like an icon. There are Christian churches named after her and in Japan there is a rose bearing her name that is planted as a symbol of peace.”

Mr Elias recalled that on one visit to Japan he was mobbed by children who knew Anne’s story and were astonished and delighted to meet a member of her family.

“My message today is to stop discriminating—everywhere,” he said.

“Auschwitz wasn’t the end of intolerance and murder—look at Srebrenicza, Rwanda and now, as we speak, Darfur.

“So I hope that the young people today realise that something is wrong and that something’s got to change.”

Mr Elias also met representatives of faith, community and public organ- isations, and later there was a special performance of Dr Korczak’s Example by Dundee Rep Theatre in the main chamber of the Town House.

The play tells the story of one doctor and the efforts he made to save children from death.

Communities minister Rhona Brankin and 17-year-old Nadine Miyaser, of the Teen Fife group from Fife’s Race and Equality Partnership, transferred the flame lit at the start of the procession to a candle to burn on the Town House steps.

Later at the Adam Smith Theatre a musical event featured Inverkeithing High School Senior Girls Choir, and VoiceMale@Aberhill Boys Choir with the East Fife Male Voice Choir.

Also performing were Sheena Wellington, Brian McGloughlin and Bani Bhattacharya.