Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) takes place annually on 27 January and marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Holocaust Memorial Day remembers:
- The six million Jewish men, women and children who perished in ghettos, mass-shootings, and concentration and extermination camps.
- Over two hundred thousand Gypsies and Travellers who were also registered, sterilised and then deported to concentration camps.
- The over 200 thousand gay men, lesbians and disabled people and all those who suffered similar fates at the hands of the Nazi regime.
- We also remember also the victims of the subsequent genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur and Bosnia.
Holocaust Memorial Day challenges each of us to learn the lessons of the past and to let those lessons inform our behaviour, our language and the way in which we treat those who are different to us. HMD encourages everyone to stand together with their local community.
To mark Holocaust Memorial Day this year, we are holding a public commemoration in the Peace Garden on Plymouth Hoe at 11.15am on Thursday 27 January 2022 which has been organised in partnership with the Plymouth Centre for Faiths and Cultural Diversity.
For Holocaust Memorial Day 2021 in the absence of mass gatherings due to the lockdown restrictions, we produced a short film in partnership with the Plymouth Centre for Faiths and Cultural Diversity. The short film explores the 2021 Holocaust Memorial Day theme ‘Be the light in the darkness’. The film which is introduced by the Lord Mayor of Plymouth, features many of Plymouth’s communities and provides an opportunity for each contributor to share why Holocaust Memorial Day is important and why we all need to ‘be the light in the darkness’.