Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 – proudly supported by our Patron, the King – will reach further and have more impact than ever before, thanks to our own work and that of the many organisations we work with around the country, including schools, local authorities, prisons, museums and many more. Look out for the special Royal Mail frank on post on Holocaust Memorial Day; buildings lit up and billboards around the country supporting our national moment to “Light the Darkness”; a moving advert in cinemas thanks to our partnership with Pearl & Dean; hundreds of hours of television and radio coverage and thousands of local events in every corner of the United Kingdom.
At the heart of this enormous engagement – as it is every year – will be the Holocaust. As millions of people across the country mark the day, they will learn about the Holocaust – the facts of this appalling history and the life stories of the six million Jews who were murdered.
Holocaust Memorial Day also highlights that – contrary to the hopes of so many at the time – antisemitism didn’t vanish with the liberation of the camps. As we know all too well, antisemitism is sadly flourishing today in new forms, as well as being repeated in age-old tropes.
The day also highlights the fact that the murder of entire populations did not end with the Holocaust. Between 1975 and 1979, over two million Cambodians were brutally killed by the Khmer Rouge. In just 100 days in 1994, around one million Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutus in Rwanda. And this year, we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, when 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered during a war of ethnic cleansing that left 100,000 people dead and two million displaced.
Learning about and commemorating these and the other subsequent genocides recognised as such by the UK government does not dilute our commemoration of the Holocaust. On the contrary, the fact that we commemorate these recent genocides is a key reason why Holocaust Memorial Day has increased so substantially in size, reach, scale and impact over the past 20 years, from just 400 events in 2005, when the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust was established, to nearly 20,000 events in 2020 during the last “milestone” year marking, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It is this model of Holocaust Memorial Day, established and supported by successive British governments, with the Holocaust at the very heart of its being, but also including commemoration of non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and the victims of subsequent genocides which has enabled Holocaust Memorial Day to engage people of all faiths, backgrounds and ages; to unify the nation around it and to teach new generations about the unique horrors of the Holocaust.
Recent pressures to disengage from commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day are led by organisations that have been historically antisemitic. It seems clear that they have no interest in commemorating the unique horrors of the Holocaust, nor the dangers of prejudice and hostility based on faith, ethnicity and other characteristics. Their agenda, sadly, is purely political and single-minded.
Our ground-breaking project this year, 80 Candles for 80 Years, specifically focusing on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, reflects the diversity of engagement.
This has been supported by schools, local authorities, museums, prisons and interfaith groups nationwide. Whoever and wherever you are, supporting Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 will help build a better future for us all.
Olivia Marks-Woldman is the chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
