Holocaust Memorial Day Event: Salisbury takes time to remember and look to a “Better Future”

Thursday, 9 January 2025 10:00

For the third year, the Salisbury City Council Communities Team are working with local residents and schools to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day.

This year’s theme from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is “For a Better Future” so this year the event will look both backwards and forwards.

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) takes place each year on 27 January. The international day remembers the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution of other groups and in genocides that followed in, for example, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

2024 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex, and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.

The event will take place on Monday, 27th January, at the Guildhall at 10.30 am, and invited representatives of communities, groups, organisations, and faiths from across the city will be in attendance.

The event will include readings, presentations and music for reflection alongside many familiar aspects from previous years, including a minute silence and the reading of the Stockholm Statements of Commitment. This has become a core moment of the City’s response to this day, creating an opportunity to collectively state that Salisbury “will continue to encourage Holocaust remembrance by holding an annual Holocaust Memorial Day. We condemn the evils of prejudice, discrimination and racism. We value a free, respectful, and democratic society” (Stockholm Statement of Commitment 7).

In addressing this year’s theme, local school and college students will speak to the present and the future by presenting on what these dark moments in global history mean to them today and to look at active ways to combat discrimination.

Poems from last year’s memorial poetry competition will be displayed alongside resources and materials from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and the Banqueting Hall at the Guildhall will be open to the public from midday until 5 pm for those who are unable to attend the event but wish to sign the memorial book and take a moment to reflect.

Anyone who wishes to attend must register their details at https://form.jotform.com/243382964834063 or by calling 01722 417100.

If you wish to represent a group or participate in the event in some way, please contact the Communities Team directly at communities@salisburycitycouncil.gov.uk or call them on 01722 417 100.