Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January) is a national event in the United Kingdom dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of The Holocaust. It was first held in January 2001 and has been on the same date every year since. The chosen date is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Union in 1945, the date also chosen for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and some other national Holocaust Memorial Days.
In addition to the national event, there are numerous smaller memorial events around the country organised by many different organisations, groups and individuals.
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Every year since 2001, there has been an annual national memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. The main national memorial was hosted in:
The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2012 will be Speak Up, Speak Out.
In 2010, for the sixty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Annual National Commemoration returned to London with the theme of The Legacy of Hope. The commemoration, at London's Guildhall, included survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp, other survivors of genocide and politicians. In a statement, The Archbishop of Canterbury urged people to hear their stories and remember their legacy.[1]
Since 1996, 27 January has officially been Gedenktag für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Anniversary for the Victims of National Socialism) in Germany. Italy and Poland have adopted similar memorial days.
On 10 June 1999, Andrew Dismore MP asked Prime Minister Tony Blair about the creation of memorial day for the Holocaust. In reply, Tony Blair also referred to the ethnic cleansing that was being witnessed in the Kosovo War at that time and said:
"I am determined to ensure that the horrendous crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust are never forgotten. The ethnic cleansing and killing that has taken place in Europe in recent weeks are a stark example of the need for vigilance."
A consultation took place during October of that year. On 27 January 2000, representatives from forty-four governments around the world met in Stockholm to discuss Holocaust education, remembrance and research. At the conclusion of the forum, the delegates unanimously signed a declaration. This declaration forms the basis of the Statement of Commitment (see below) adopted for Holocaust Memorial Day.
In 2004 The United Nations voted, by 149 votes out of 191, to formally commemorate the Holocaust atrocity,
Between 2001 and 2007, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) expressed its unwillingness to attend the ceremony. The MCB instead called for a more inclusive day proposing the commemoration of deaths in Palestine, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, along with the Holocaust. In a press release dated 26th January 2001 the Muslim Council of Britain listed two points of contention that prevented them from attending the event, which were that it "totally excludes and ignores the ongoing genocide and violation of Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere" and that "It includes the controversial question of alleged Armenian genocide as well as the so-called gay genocide."[2] The MCB did not send official representatives to any of the official events associated with Holocaust Memorial Day. The latter policy has been generally referred to as a boycott, although the MCB leadership has objected to the use of that term. In 2005, Iqbal Sacranie suggested that the deaths of Palestianians should also be remembered.[3]
The MCB policy of withholding participation was condemned variously by Labour MP Louise Ellman, Peter Tatchell representing the lesbian and gay human rights group OutRage!,[4] and Terry Sanderson of the British National Secular Society.[5]
In a public and controversial interview on the BBC programme Panorama,[6] Iqbal Sacranie, the then General Secretary of the MCB, denied that the policy constituted a boycott. The MCB subsequently made an official complaint to the BBC that their position had been misrepresented by selective editing of the interview. This complaint was rejected by the BBC.[7]
On 3 December 2007, the MCB voted to end the boycott. Assistant general secretary Inayat Bunglawala argued it was 'inadvertently causing hurt to some in the Jewish community'.[8]
The MCB renewed their boycott for the 2009 commemoration, in reaction the 2008–2009 conflict in Gaza.[9] Despite initially refusing to confirm whether or not they would take part in the 2010 commemoration,[10] they eventually voted to send a junior representative, Dr Shuja Shafi, to attend the event in London.[11]
The event also drew similar criticism in 2000 from the United Kingdom's Armenian community, which complained that the event remained exclusively for commemorating those who perished in the Holocaust, and not the Armenian Genocide.[12] Neil Frater, an official from Tony Blair's Race Equality Unit, a branch of the Home Office, replied that it had consulted the Holocaust Memorial Day Steering Group on the issue and had agreed that while it understood that the Armenian Genocide was an "appalling tragedy", it wanted to "avoid the risk of the message becoming too diluted if we try to include too much history."[13][14] Frater went on to say that it had gone on with the Steering Group's advice to reject the Genocide, along with the Crusades, colonialism and the Boer War. His comments were received with even more criticism. Zaven Messerlian, the principal of the Armenian Evangelical College in Beirut, Lebanon, stated that "any serious commemoration must include the aetiology of genocide, particularly those of the twentieth century, especially if one encouraged the next."[13] The UK-based Refugee Council also supported this position, since the event was supposed to include "all victims of genocide."[15]
The British government faced a flurry of public criticism for its decision not to include the Armenian Genocide, most notably in the daily newspaper The Independent from its chief Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk.[16] After months of pressure, the government allowed twenty Armenian survivors to attend the event in its first annual commemoration. Armenians contended that the British government held out for so long because it wished to preserve its relationship with the successor state of the Ottoman Empire and NATO ally, Turkey.[15]