ONE luggage label, attached to a pair of strappy gold sandals, said simply Don’t Forget . Another, tied to a pair of men’s black dress shoes, read Never Again .

Together, the hundreds of pairs of shoes fanning out from the Frith Stool, the traditional point of sanctuary in Hexham Abbey, spoke volumes during Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday.

It is the day on which people all over the world pause to remember the six million Jews who perished during the Second World War, as well as being the date on which Auschwitz, the concentration camp where a million of them died, was liberated. That was 70 years ago this week.

As varied as the people that donated them, the bank of brogues and ballet pumps, sandshoes and sandals, walking boots and wellies, all said one thing: the former owners pledged they would not stand by in the face of discrimination.

Event organiser Toni Bush, who had just been up to Hexham’s Queen Elizabeth High School to collect another car-load of donations, said: “There is an echo of the concentration camps in piles of discarded shoes, but today, this is a gesture of solidarity - it is about people here in Hexham standing up to be counted.”

Pupils from both St Joseph’s and Hexham Middle School took along yet more bagfuls on Wednesday, and members of the public have continued to drop in throughout the week to place their shoes.

Key to the installation, entitled Don’t Stand By , were accounts of bravery in times of genocide through the decades, from the Second World War to Bosnia and Darfur.

There was also a very practical side to the Abbey’s appeal – some of the shoes will be passed on to Newcastle’s West End Refugee Service and the rest will be given to local charities.