Holocaust Memorial Day was established in 2000 to remember the destruction of European Jewry during the Second World War, to acknowledge subsequent atrocities around the world in places such as Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia, and to try and prevent a recurrence in the future. 27 January was chosen as it is the date that the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated in 1945.
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust sets an annual theme, which provides a focus for individual communities and schools to concentrate their efforts and give prominence to a fresh aspect of this special day each year. This year’s theme is ‘Ordinary People’, highlighting the ordinary people who let genocide happen, the ordinary people who actively perpetrated genocide, and the ordinary people who were persecuted. It also prompts us to consider how ordinary people, such as ourselves, can perhaps play a bigger part than we might imagine in challenging prejudice today.