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Anzac Day at Auckland War Memorial Museum is an opportunity to commemorate fallen New Zealanders from all the conflicts that our country has been involved in – we honour their selfless sacrifice and celebrate the freedom and privileges they secured for us all.
This year our Anzac activities payed special tribute to the many soldiers who returned home carrying the heavy burdens of service. Read the winning poems from our Lest We Forget Poetry Competition.
Our symbolic meeting-place
New Zealand sent more men to fight in World War I per head of population than any other nation. Of those killed, almost a third were buried half a world away in unmarked graves. Following the war, subscriptions were raised to construct the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The Museum opened in 1929 and became a symbolic meeting-place for Aucklanders to focus their grief.
Today Auckland War Memorial Museum still forms the city’s emotional hub around Anzac Day. In the lead-up to Anzac Day we projected film onto the Museum’s northern façade. Our 2012 projections (edited by filmmaker Gaylene Preston) are a selection of archival footage celebrating our veterans and the bonds that were forged in war and, for many, lasted a lifetime.
Photograph: the last Gallipoli veterans reunion in Auckland 25 April 1975 taken by Robin Morrison.
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