This is held around the world on the 27 January each year, which is the day that Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet armies in 1945.
One year when this date fell on a Sunday, we observed Holocaust remembrance by reflecting on some art images from a book by Alicia Melamed Adams, a Jewish woman who was 13 and living in Poland at the time of the war, and who now lives in London.
I introduced the day as follows:
56 years ago yesterday, Soviet armies towards the end of WW2 , entered the German prison camp of Auschwitz in occupied Poland. Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Its gas chambers were capable of killing 6000 people a day. 1.5-2 million people, mostly Jews, died horrific deaths at Auschwitz in less than 5 years.
11 million people died (6 million Jews) in what has become known as the Holocaust. The systematic slaughter of women, men and children who were transported from around Europe, to Auschwitz and the other death camps.
Today is internationally known as ‘Holocaust Sunday’. If you don’t know much about the Holocaust, find out. Type Holocaust into any web search engine.
Here’s one person’s story from that time.
I put copies of the paintings from Adams’ book on the overhead one by one, and read out the notes from the book text that went with the picture.