Lesley Urbach

Lesley Urbach, a British Holocaust educator who spent decades ensuring the story of her mother's survival of Auschwitz was passed on to new generations, died on 17 September 2026 at the age of 69. News of her death was confirmed in an obituary describing her as a Holocaust educator, and it followed years of public work through the charity she helped found, Generation2Generation (G2G).

Urbach was the daughter of Naomi Blake, a sculptor who survived Auschwitz, and she built much of her adult life around preserving and teaching that history. She carried out significant research into the Nazi Holocaust and published two books about her mother's life and survival, work that gave her a personal as well as professional authority when she spoke to audiences about genocide and its aftermath. She brought roughly two decades of teaching experience to this later work, moving from the classroom into full time Holocaust education.

She was a founding member of Generation2Generation, a charity built around the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and refugees speaking directly to schools and community groups, and she served the organisation as a trustee, co-chair and bookings coordinator. In her talks she did not confine the lesson to the murder of six million Jews alone. She placed the Holocaust alongside other groups who were targeted and killed, and she pushed her audiences to see the throughline to prejudice still directed today at people because of their ethnicity, religion, colour, gender, sexuality or disability, urging listeners to act when they witnessed injustice. She was also a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, extending her reach into the national commemoration that takes place every January.

Urbach was based in London and was a member of Finchley Progressive Synagogue, the north London congregation that paid tribute to her after her death, describing the loss felt within its community. Full details of the circumstances of her death, including any illness or cause, have not been made public, and this page will be updated as more information becomes available. Tributes so far have focused on her decades of quiet, determined work bringing the testimony of the Holocaust into schools long after the generation who lived through it has largely passed away.

Her death leaves a gap in Holocaust education in Britain at a moment when firsthand survivor testimony is disappearing and organisations like Generation2Generation have taken on ever greater importance in keeping that history alive for new generations. Colleagues and admirers have remembered her as someone who turned a personal family history of unimaginable loss into a lifelong public service.