Holocaust Memorial Day

Holocaust Memorial Day is the annual commemoration of the Holocaust and of subsequent genocides, observed on 27 January, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet forces in 1945. It was established as the United Kingdom’s national observance by the Blair government in 2001 with the first observance in January 2001. It is now observed by around forty countries; the United Nations adopted 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day in November 2005 by General Assembly Resolution 60/7. The German federal observance, the Tag des Gedenkens an die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, has been observed on the same date since 1996, predating the wider international observance by five years.

The 1996 German precedent

The German federal observance was established by President Roman Herzog in January 1996 by formal proclamation. The choice of 27 January was Herzog’s; he had wanted the date that marked the liberation of the largest single killing site rather than a date associated with the war’s end or with a specifically German event. The German observance has, since 1996, included an annual address by the federal president to the Bundestag, formal ceremonies at the principal German memorial sites, and a substantial programme of school and public commemoration. The Bundestag annual address has been one of the principal occasions on which post-war German political leaders have addressed the country directly on the legacy of the regime; the addresses by successive presidents (Herzog, Rau, Köhler, Wulff, Gauck, Steinmeier) have produced some of the most-cited speeches in the post-war German political record.

The 2001 British observance

The British Holocaust Memorial Day was established by the Blair government in October 2000, with the first observance taking place on 27 January 2001. The proposal had originated with the Holocaust Educational Trust and was supported by the Board of Deputies of British Jews; the government’s adoption was, in part, a response to the Wiesenthal Centre’s 1999 ranking of European countries on Holocaust commemoration, which had placed the United Kingdom in a low position relative to the major continental democracies.

The British observance is administered by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, established in 2005 to coordinate the national programme. The Trust selects an annual theme and produces resources for use by schools, faith communities, local authorities and individuals; the 2024 theme was “Fragility of Freedom”, the 2025 theme was “For a Better Future”. The annual UK Commemoration Ceremony is held in central London and is broadcast on BBC television; it includes addresses by the prime minister and by surviving British-resident Holocaust and genocide survivors. The Trust estimates that around 11,000 commemorative events are held across the United Kingdom each year on or around 27 January.

The UN observance

The United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day was established by General Assembly Resolution 60/7 of 1 November 2005 on a resolution introduced by Israel and co-sponsored by 104 member states. The resolution rejects any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, urges member states to develop educational programmes, condemns all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, and commemorates the victims of the Holocaust on 27 January each year.

The UN observance is conducted at UN headquarters in New York and at UN offices around the world. The annual observance includes a memorial ceremony at the UN General Assembly, exhibitions, educational programmes, and, since 2010, a UN Holocaust Memorial Programme that produces a substantial annual programme of academic and educational events. The Israeli mission to the UN has, since 2005, been the principal driver of the annual observance.

The participating countries

Around forty countries observe 27 January as a national or quasi-national Holocaust commemoration. The list includes most of the European democracies (Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Greece and others), the United States (which observes both 27 January and the separate Yom HaShoah established by Congressional resolution in 1980), Canada, Australia, Israel, and a growing list of countries elsewhere. The participation is not uniform: some countries observe the day with substantial state ceremony and educational programme; others observe it more narrowly. The participation level has risen steadily since 2005.

The continuing arguments

Holocaust Memorial Day has been the subject of recurrent controversy. The principal lines of argument have been: whether the observance should commemorate only the Holocaust or also subsequent genocides (the British observance includes Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur and other later atrocities; the Israeli Yom HaShoah is specifically the Jewish Holocaust); whether 27 January is the appropriate date (the Israeli national observance, Yom HaShoah, falls on the 27th of Nisan in the Jewish calendar, around April or May, marking the Warsaw ghetto uprising rather than the camp liberation); whether the observance has, over time, become a routine state ceremony that has lost its original force; and whether the substantial educational programmes around the day succeed in their aims or function as ritual without effect. The arguments have been substantial but have not, on balance, led to the abandonment of the observance in any of the participating countries; the trajectory has rather been steady expansion.

See also

Sources

  • Andy Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain, Routledge, 2014 (chapters on the British observance)
  • Tom Lawson, Debates on the Holocaust, Manchester University Press, 2010
  • Dan Stone, The Holocaust, Fascism and Memory, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
  • Aleida Assmann, Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity, Fordham University Press, 2016 (German context)
  • United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7, “Holocaust Remembrance”, 1 November 2005
  • Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, https://www.hmd.org.uk
  • United Nations Holocaust Memorial Programme, https://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance
  • Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft, https://www.stiftung-evz.de