UN International Youth Day
12th August marks the 8th annual United Nations’ International Youth Day. This day is an opportunity for governments and others to draw attention to youth issues worldwide. Concerts, workshops, cultural events, and meetings involving national and local government officials and youth organisations take place around the world in honour of International Youth Day
Young people throughout the UK are central to the issues bought forward by Holocaust Memorial Day. Alongside them, we can learn the lessons of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides to build a safer, fairer world. HMDT has worked with young people in creating resources, as in the case of Nellie Delaney, a 15 year old Irish Traveller from Merseyside who bravely shared the experience of losing her brother Johnny, who was kicked to death in 2003 for being “different.”
In our 2008 education materials and for which Nellie has recently been presented with an award for Moral Courage from the Anne Frank Trust UK. In 2007, HMDT and The Holocaust Centre, Beth Shalom held a joint creative writing competition for young people which was won by Reggie Chamberlain-King for his poem The Fate of the Bereft in which he wrote:
“You need each other,
For the good of the world.
Go, sit,
Find out together
How you may unite the world.”
Holocaust survivors in the UK tell the stories of their lives in Nazi occupied Europe when they too were young people, an experience we cannot imagine. On the HMDT website, you can find out more about:
The Kindertransport which was made up of 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish Children coming to Britain in 1938, fleeing from Nazi persecution.
The case study of Helen Bamber who, at age 20, went to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after liberation to help rehabilitate survivors.
The testimony of Kitty Hart-Moxon who aged 15, was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
HMDT produce book group activities designed for young people, who may wish to use these as part of their International Youth Day activities
Hundreds of young people from youth groups, schools, colleges, faith groups and in their own communities participate in Holocaust Memorial Day. Contact HMDT to discuss ways of involving young people in your commemorations.
