Lancaster is commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day through as series of events co-ordinated by NCBI Lancashire.
Holocaust Memorial Day 2010 marks the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is challenging everyone across the UK to become part of a Legacy of Hope. HMD 2010 offers an opportunity to listen to the voices from the Holocaust and Nazi persecution, and to make the lessons of hope for a safer, inclusive society where the differences between us are respected a reality today and in the future. Holocaust survivors have played an immense role in bringing our attention to the lessons of the Holocaust.
On 27th January at 8.20pm the Dukes is showing Defiance – an inspiring true story about three Jewish brothers who escape death and go on to lead many Jews to safety.
Finally, on 28th January there’s the annual candle lighting commemoration at 6.30 in the Garden of memorial beside the town hall followed at 7.00pm by a celebration of hope co-ordinated by More Music.
Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27th January 1945 and found several thousand emaciated survivors and the smouldering remains of the gas chambers and crematoria – the Nazi attempt to destroy evidence of their crimes against humanity. It was the largest Nazi killing camp, murdering approximately 1.1 million men, women and children, and has become a symbol of the horror of industrialised murder, and what can happen when hatred is left unchecked.
Holocaust Memorial Day remembers not just the victims of Nazi persecution and murder, but those killed in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
• Holocaust Memorial Day web site: www.hmd.org.uk