The president of the Board of Deputies has expressed concerns for “the chilling effect” calls to boycott Holocaust Memorial Day could have on the annual event.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission sent a letter to 460 local councils and universities, urging them to boycott the event next month after the HMD Trust “refused to include Gaza among the genocides being marked”.

Speaking at Limmud, Board President Phil Rosenberg said: “Last year, there was an almost 20 per cent drop, and with calls for the boycott we are anxious about what is going to happen next month.”

Rosenberg, who sits on the board of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said that he had been encouraged by the response of local councils, some of whom had added Holocaust Memorial Day resources in response to the calls to boycott.

In an article in the Jewish News, Councillor Jeremy Newmark, leader of Hertsmere Borough Council said that said he had found the request “appalling, objectionable and racist” and that it was a “thinly veiled attempt to redefine Holocaust Memorial Day as a vehicle to attack the state of Israel”.

Demands for a boycott had only served to motivate him to put more resources and energy into marking the day, he said.

Rosenberg added that the team at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust was “working incredibly hard to host events throughout the country”.

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 will mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It will also mark 30 years since the genocide in Bosnia and remember victims of other genocides, including Rwanda and Darfur.

Organisers of HMD, whose theme this year is For a Better Future, have stated that, following an increase in both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hatred in the UK since October 7, they hoped that the occasion would be “be an opportunity for people to come together, learn both from and about the past and take actions to make a better future for all”.