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What is Holocaust Memorial Day?

About: Holocaust Memorial Day

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) is the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and of other genocides. On it, we commemorate victims, honour survivors and commit to tackling prejudice, discrimination and racism in the present day. We encourage nations to conquer genocide and atrocity and individuals to stand up against hatred.

HMD is marked each year on 27 January – the anniversary of the date of the liberation of Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

HMD sets out to motivate people to make sure that the horrendous crimes committed during the Holocaust and in more recent genocides, are neither forgotten nor repeated, whether in Europe or elsewhere in the world.

The Holocaust

Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews in a systematic, state-sponsored campaign of persecution and extermination now known as the Holocaust. It persecuted, incarcerated and murdered millions of its own citizens, and those of the countries it invaded, on the basis of skin colour; disability; sexual orientation; ethnicity; religious belief or political affiliation.

In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. The Nazi campaign to exclude and persecute Jews, and others, as “life unworthy of life” began. By May 1945 close to two out of every three Jews in Europe had been murdered in the Holocaust.

During World War II (1939-45), the Nazis created ghettos to isolate Jews and established concentration camps to imprison all people targeted on ethnic, racial or political grounds. Between 1942 and 1944 Nazi Germany deported millions of people from the territories it occupied to extermination camps to be murdered in gas chambers. At the largest killing centre, Auschwitz-Birkenau, transports of Jews arrived almost daily from across Europe.

Although Jews were the primary victims of Nazi racism, others targeted for death included upwards of two hundred thousand Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) and almost quarter of a million mentally or physically disabled people. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, millions of people were persecuted and murdered. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, or maltreatment. The Nazis killed tens of thousands of Polish intellectual and religious leaders; deported millions of Polish and Soviet citizens for forced labour and persecuted and incarcerated gay men and lesbians*.

Millions of lives were lost, or changed beyond recognition. The consequences of this loss and persecution are felt today by Holocaust survivors, their children and grand-children, in the UK and around the world.

About: Genocides

Genocide – the killing of or causing serious harm with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group

Genocide is recognised as a crime in international law, under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, first ratified in 1948.

1975-1979 Cambodia

The fate of Cambodia shocked the world when the radical communist Khmer Rouge, under their leader Pol Pot, seized power in 1975 after years of guerrilla warfare. The Khmer Rouge ruthlessly imposed an extremist programme to reconstruct Cambodia (now under its Khmer name Kampuchea) on the communist model of Mao’s China – creating “Year Zero”. The population was made to work as labourers in one huge federation of collective farms. The inhabitants of towns and cities were forced to leave. The ill, disabled, old and very young were driven out, regardless of their physical condition. No-one was spared the exodus. People who refused to leave were killed, so were those who did not leave fast enough and those who would not obey orders.

Also targeted were minority groups, victims of the Khmer Rouge’s racism. These included ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai, and also Cambodians with Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai ancestry. Half the Cham Muslim population was murdered, as were 8,000 Christians. Buddhism was eliminated from the country and by 1977 there were no functioning monasteries left in Cambodia.

All political and civil rights were abolished. Children were taken from their parents and placed in separate forced labour camps. Factories, schools and universities were shut down, so were hospitals. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and professional people in any field were murdered, together with their extended families. Religion was banned, so were music and radio sets. It was possible for people to be shot simply for knowing a foreign language, wearing glasses, laughing, or crying. One Khmer slogan ran ‘To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.’

Civilian deaths in this period, from executions, disease, exhaustion and starvation, have been estimated at well over 2 million.

1992 Bosnia

In 1980, the population of Bosnia consisted of Serbs, Bosniaks (Sunni Muslim), and Croats. In the turmoil following the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Bosnia declared independence (1992). This was resisted by the Bosnian Serb population who saw their future as part of “Greater Serbia”. Bosnia became the victim of the Serbs’ determined wish for political domination, which it was prepared to achieve by isolating ethnic groups and, if necessary, exterminating them. In July 1995 Serb troops and paramilitaries led by Ratko Mladic descended on Srebrenica and began shelling it. Despite being declared a safe zone by the United Nations, Serb forces prevailed. Women and children were forced onto trucks and buses, men and boys remained. The deportation of Srebrenica’s population took 4 days.

Up to 7,500 men, and boys over 13 years old, were killed. Up to 3,000, many in the act of trying to escape, were shot or decapitated in the fields. Mladic had sent out his written order to ‘block, crush and destroy the straggling parts of the Muslim group’ – it was carried out. 1,500 were locked in a warehouse and sprayed with machine gun fire and grenades. Others died in their thousands on farms, football fields and school playgrounds. The whole action was carried out with military efficiency.

1994 Rwanda

In 100 days in 1994 1,000, 000 Tutsis, and some moderate Hutus, were murdered in the Rwandan genocide. On April 6 1994 the plane carrying Rwanda’s president was shot down. The Tutsis were accused of killing the president, and Hutu civilians were told, by radio and word of mouth, that it was their duty to wipe out the Tutsis. First, though, moderate Hutus who weren’t anti-Tutsi should be killed. So should Tutsi wives or husbands. Although on a large scale, this genocide was carried out entirely by hand, often using machetes and clubs. The men who’d been trained to massacre were members of civilian death squads, the Interahamwe. The State provided supporting organisation – politicians, officials, intellectuals and professional soldiers incited the killers to do their work. Local officials assisted in rounding up victims and making suitable places available for slaughter.

Tutsi men, women, children and babies were killed in thousands in schools and churches. The victims, in their last moments alive, were also faced by another appalling fact, their cold-blooded killers were people they knew – neighbours, work-mates, former friends, sometimes even relatives through marriage.

HMD—Relevant to us, today

Nazi ideology was founded on racism, anti-semitism and discrimination, creating a fascist state that rejected human and civil rights. The evils of prejudice, discrimination and intolerance continue to exist in Britain. We categorise, stereotype, discriminate, exclude, bully, persecute, attack – because of race, religion, disability, sexuality. We damage, and are damaged, as a result of our refusal to accept our common humanity. We murder. Nations commit genocide. HMD acts as a reminder to all of us of our responsibility to protect the civil and human rights of all people in our society and across the world.

HMD: YOUR INVITATION

HMD – 27th January – is the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and of other genocides.

Hundreds of events, open to all, are held across the UK to mark HMD. You can join in one of these or create one of your own. Anyone can organise an activity to commemorate HMD.

Individual symbolic acts, like lighting a candle or observing a silence also signify your commitment to remember the past and create a better future.

In hundreds of places across the UK, and in thousands around the world, people come together to honour the past and build a safer, fairer world.

*source www.ushmm.org