27th January 2025 by

Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January)

Post submitted by Ella, one of our Student Experience Ambassadors

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place every year on 27th January. The day marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.

The Holocaust, known as the Shoah in Hebrew, was a systemic, state-sponsored attempt at a mass genocide of all Jews in Europe. In 1941, the plan known by the Nazi party as ‘The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem’ began and death squads were formed. Between 1933 and 1945, over 44,000 concentration and extermination camps were established throughout German-occupied Europe. The Nazis, in these camps, committed multiple atrocities, ranging from forced labour to mass murder.

By the end of the Holocaust, it was estimated that six million Jewish people had died in the Holocaust, as well as around 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, 1.8 million non-Jewish Poles, and several hundred thousand others from minority groups.

The Holocaust Memorial Day encourages the world to remember the discrimination and persecution that Jewish people faced during the Holocaust and continue to face in today’s society. It serves to commemorate the millions of people murdered by the Nazis, honour the survivors as well as those whose lives were changed irreversibly. The day encourages people to learn more about the past, empathise with those around us, and work towards a discrimination-free society.