Holocaust Memorial Day

History of Holocaust Memorial Day

When World War II broke out in 1939, Germany invaded Poland subjecting approximately two million Polish Jews to abuse and slave labor. Thousands of Jews died during the occupation’s first months. Right after the invasion, Polish Jews connected to particular communities known as ‘ghettos.’

The living conditions in these ghettos were deplorable — a deliberate attempt by the Nazis to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews. This strategy was replicated throughout Eastern Europe in other Nazi-occupied countries.

The mass genocide of Europe’s Jews began as part of the Nazis’ “Final Remedy to the Jewish Problem.” Einsatzgruppen, and other death squads, swept through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, killing Jews through public execution. By the end of 1941, the first eradication camp, Chelmno in Poland, had been established, providing the Nazis with a method to continue mass killings.

The day commemorates the Nazi regime and its contemporaries’ murder of about six million Jews, as well as millions of others. On November 1, 2005, the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 60/7. The proposal came after a special session pretty early that year, on January 24, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and thus the final act of the Holocaust.

Many countries have established Holocaust Memorial Days. Many, like the United Kingdom’s Holocaust Memorial Day, fall on January 27, whereas others, such as Israel’s Yom HaShoah, are acknowledged at other moments of the year.

Thousands of people gather across the U.K. each year to gain more knowledge about the previous era and take measures to ensure a safer future. They learn more, empathize more, and take on more responsibilities. We stand in solidarity with those who have been victims of genocide, and we honor survivors and all those whose lives have been altered beyond recognition on Holocaust Memorial Day.