On 27th January, the day that the notorious concentration and death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated Holocaust Memorial Day remembers the murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children during the Second World War.
Holocaust Memorial Day also provides an opportunity to remember other victims of Nazi persecution, including the Roma and Sinti community, homosexuals, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political opponents, and in the genocides which followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, and pledge that mankind does not repeat with the same mistakes again.
The theme for this year is Ordinary People.
Genocide is facilitated by ordinary people. Ordinary people turn a blind eye, believe propaganda, join murderous regimes. And those who are persecuted, oppressed and murdered in genocide aren’t persecuted because of the crimes they’ve committed – they are persecuted simply because they are ordinary people who belong to a particular group.