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Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 - It's History And This Year's Theme

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(Holocaust Memorial, Berlin-Mitte, Germany by Peter Eisenman, opened in 2005)


History of the Holocaust


Holocaust Memorial Day takes place every year on the 27th of January, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest death camp that the Nazis’ operated. Holocaust Memorial Day is a chance to remember the 6,000,000 Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of people murdered under the persecution of other groups such as Roma or groups Hitler viewed as ‘a-social’. This day also encourages the remembrance of the people killed in more recent genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Darfur, and Rwanda.


The Holocaust began in 1941, two years after the German invasion of Poland. Before the start of WWII in 1939, the Jewish population and the other groups targeted by Hitler in Germany faced escalating persecution including over 400 antisemitic laws being passed between 1933 and 1938. The situation in Germany worsened considerably on the night of the 9th of November 1938 – famously known as Kristallnacht. Kristallnacht (which translates to ‘The Night of Broken Glass’) saw a series of pogroms (organised massacres of a particular ethnic group) against the Jewish population throughout Germany where Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues, and homes were destroyed by the Nazis and the German population that agreed with the Nazis’ ideology.


The persecution against the Jewish population and other groups only escalated with the invasion of Poland, where Jews were being forced into ghettos (enclosed districts to isolate Jews from the non-Jewish population) where many died of starvation, disease, and poor sanitation due to the abysmal conditions. With Hitler’s advance into the Soviet Union in 1941, came the mass murders of the Jewish population in the USSR (Soviet Union) which led to the Wannsee Conference in 1942. The Wannsee Conference formalised the Nazis’ policy to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe – this they called ‘The Final Solution’. Seeing as the ghettos in Germany and Poland were overpopulated, Heydrich (Director of the Gestapo – secret police for the Nazis) suggested using the Jewish population for work in the east on road works, and whoever was unable to work would be murdered.


By the end of 1942, 6 extermination camps were in operation throughout Poland alone: Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Nazis would mass murder the Jewish populations being moved into these camps by gas. This went on until the end of World War 2. The liberation of extermination camps across German-occupied territory began with the liberation of Majdanek in Poland in 1944 and ended with Bergen-Belsen in Germany in 1945. Hitler attempted to destroy some of the camps when he realised the Allies had caught wind of what was going on, some of which he did successfully but camps like Majdanek remained almost completely intact as well as Auschwitz.

 

2024 Theme: Fragility of Freedom

The theme for the Holocaust Memorial Day this year is ‘Fragility of Freedom’. This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda against the Tutsi population, 49 years after the Holocaust ended and 19 years after the genocide in Cambodia.


This year’s theme aims to emphasise the frail nature of freedom and how it should not be taken for granted. Professor Gregory Stanton (of Genocide Watch) identified ten stages of genocide which demonstrates that genocide doesn’t just happen, it is a series of events that are created or occur to lead to a climate where genocide can take place.

What sort of freedoms are restricted as part of a genocide? People targeted during genocides are restricted from several freedoms such as:


Freedom of Religion and Freedom to Self-Identity

During the Holocaust, the restriction of rights for the Jewish population started with the removal of Jewish people from certain professions, schools, and universities. The 1935 Nuremberg laws restricted who Jews could marry and went even further as to define what a Jewish person was: anyone with 3 or 4 Jewish grandparents was considered Jewish, regardless of whether that person identified as Jewish or not. Many synagogues were burnt down or destroyed during Kristallnacht and many Torah scrolls (the holy book of Judaism) were stolen or destroyed by Nazis, preventing Jews from being able to practice their religion.


Freedom of Reproduction

The restriction of reproductive freedom was common during Nazi control and hundreds of thousands of people were sterilised by Nazis if they perceived individuals as mentally or physically disabled.


Freedom of Movement

In the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, their freedom of movement was restricted by the military and the oppressing group. Radio stations broadcasted messages demanding people to stay in their homes, giving soldiers the chance to go door-to-door and find the people they deemed ‘responsible’ for the killing of the President of Rwanda.


False Freedom

Perpetrator regimes often conceal their genocidal actions to keep the population they are targeting calm and fill them with a false sense of security to prevent revolts. An example of this is what is written on the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau (the largest death camp used by the Nazis) and other camps in occupied German territory: ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ which translates to ‘Work Gives You Freedom.’ This of course was far from reality, but it gave the prisoners a false sense of attainable freedom.


In 1981, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide, Var Ashe Houston BEM, had learned that her husband had flown to Phnom Penh with a group of other Khmer intellectuals. They had been told that the communist regime at the time could use their skills to rebuild the country which once again was far from reality as they were imprisoned when they arrived.


Freedom Of Expression

In genocides, people’s freedom of expression is restricted and limited by state-controlled propaganda pushing a certain narrative against the oppressed group to the general population. Individuals who speak up are often murdered or imprisoned. A survivor of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, Jean Baptiste Kayigamba, who currently lives in the UK said: “The infamous hate Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines was spewing its venom against the Tutsis, blaming them for assassinating the president.”


Freedom to Live

During the Holocaust, 6 million Jews were murdered in the death camps and the concentration camps as well as in fields and the ghettos they were forced into. In recent genocides, vast numbers of people were killed purely because of their ethnicity, faith or other form of identity. An example of this is the Srebrenica genocide where the Serbian Military began the process of ethnically cleansing Bosnian Muslims in the Srebrenica territory.

 

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day theme aims to cement the importance and frailty of freedom and how easily it can be taken. This day is a chance for us to remember all those who had been restricted multiple freedoms and ultimately their freedom to live. As well as a chance to learn more about what freedoms are restricted by oppressors and allow us as an international community to continue to speak out and fight against oppressing regimes across the world.

 

If the information and reflections in this blog post have stirred any emotional reactions within you, know that you are not alone. Our low-cost counseling service is here to provide a safe space for support and healing, ensuring that you have the resources to navigate and process your emotions.


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