Holocaust Memorial Day
Late January saw the 76th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation and the Auschwitz museum held a virtual event to commemorate the 200,000 children who were murdered at the Nazi death camp in Poland. Only 700 youngsters were still alive when the Red Army liberated the camp on 27 January, 1945. The museum at Auschwitz streamed its commemoration on social media channels including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and put it on its own website.
Museum Director, Piotr Cwyinski commented, “200,000 children were murdered in Auschwitz.
Completely innocent, good, curious about life, loving their closest ones, trusting children. The adult world - after all, so often unjust and cruel - has never demonstrated so much of its heartlessness, its evil. This cannot be justified by any ideology, reckoning or politics. This year we want to dedicate the anniversary of liberation to the youngest victims of the camp.”
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and the UN Secretary General spoke at an online event, while the German parliament met in-person for a commemoration in
Berlin itself.
Pope Francis called for people to remember the victims of the Nazi genocide while Israel's President, Reuven Rivlin, will joined a virtual event in a country where many elderly survivors of the Holocaust had already been inoculated against Covid-19.
Those who were children of the camps are now the most at risk category in the global pandemic.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Prince of Wales led the Royal family's tribute to victims and survivors. In a video on the Clarence House
Twitter page he urged people to remember Holocaust Memorial Day and asked people to ensure survivors' stories were remembered forever as the number of people able to bear first-hand witness to the horrors of the genocide, decreases steadily each year.
Prince Charles is patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and remarked in the video, “This is our time when we can, each in our own way, be the light that ensures the darkness can never return. On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember all those who died during the Holocaust and other genocides.”
A traditional remembrance ceremony was hosted online and followed by landmarks across Britain, such as Wembley Stadium, Cardiff Castle and the Tyne Bridge, being bathed in purple light.