The Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration is firmly established in the Irish national calendar and takes place in Dublin every year on the Sunday nearest to 27 January, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The event cherishes the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and recalls the millions of innocent Jewish men, women and children and others, who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis because of their ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, political affiliations or their religious beliefs.
Holocaust Memorial Day honours the memory of all of the victims of the Holocaust. The inclusion of all the victim groups is integral to the commemoration, highlighting the consequences of intolerance. The commemoration demonstrates the Irish Government’s commitment to the Declaration of Stockholm 2000 when the signatory countries undertook to commemorate the Holocaust and to teach about it every year.
In Ireland Holocaust Memorial Day is organised under the auspices of HETI in association with the Department of Justice and Equality, The Office for the Promotion of Migrant Integration and Dublin City Council. It is attended by people from all walks of Irish life and society, and from a broad spectrum of political, religious, community and cultural institutions.
The ceremony includes readings, survivors’ recollections, music and candle-lighting. Six candles are lit for the six million Jewish people who perished in the Holocaust as well as candles for all of the other victim groups. More than 100 school students from all over Ireland attend the ceremony, some of them reading from the Scroll of Names an Irish memorial to cherished family members of people living in Ireland, who were murdered. Holocaust Memorial Day is always a very moving, dignified and impressive occasion.
From the 2016 Holocaust Memorial Day celebration in Dublin:
A Holocaust Memorial Day booklet is produced each year by HETI for the commemoration and these are excellent resources for teaching and learning. All booklets record the programme and readers at the commemoration. The booklet focuses on different topics each year. All of these booklets are available to download on the links HERE.
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Annual Holocaust Memorial Day Lecture 7 February 2017
2018 Annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture
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Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental tells the story of his experience as a nine-year-old boy in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, in a lecture co-hosted by UCD Philosophy Society and UCD German Society (31 March 2015).
'In the last couple of years I realised that, as one of the last witnesses, I must speak out.'
"Tomi Reichental, who lost 35 members of his family in the Holocaust, gives his account of being imprisoned as a child at Belsen concentration camp.
He was nine-years old in October 1944 when he was rounded up by the Gestapo in a shop in Bratislava, Slovakia. Along with 12 other members of his family he was taken to a detention camp where the elusive Nazi War Criminal Alois Brunner had the power of life and death.
His story is a story of the past. It is also a story for our times. The Holocaust reminds us of the dangers of racism and intolerance, providing lessons that are relevant today."
Tomi Reichental was born in 1935 in Slovakia. He was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. Tomi has lived in Dublin since 1959 and regularly talks to Irish schools about his wartime experiences. A documentary about Tomi's attempts to meet one of his jailers, Close to Evil, has been shown on TV and in cinemas throughout the world, and helped again to raise the profile of the Holocaust.
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Yad Vashem
"And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name (a "yad vashem")... that shall not be cut off."
(Isaiah, chapter 56, verse 5)
As the Jewish people’s living memorial to the Holocaust, Yad Vashem safeguards the memory of the past and imparts its meaning for future generations. Established in 1953, as the world center for documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem is today a dynamic and vital place of intergenerational and international encounter. For over half a century, Yad Vashem has been committed to four pillars of remembrance:
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