Patrick Comerford
Next Monday (27 January) marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, in 1945. Holocaust Memorial Day is particularly significant year with this anniversary and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.
Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, antisemitism has increased significantly in the UK and globally following the 7 October attacks in Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza. Extremists are also exploiting the situation to stir up anti-Muslim hatred or Islamophobia. Many Jewish and Muslim communities are feeling vulnerable, with hostility and suspicion of others rising.
The rise of the far-right across Europe, including disturbing electoral gains in Germany and Austria, and the political affirmation of extremism in the US in recent weeks, make its even more urgent for us all to speak out against Holocaust and genocide denial and distortion, to challenge prejudice, and to encourage others to learn about the Holocaust and more recent genocides.
Of course racism and hatred do not always lead to genocide. But all genocides begin with insidious stages including propaganda, ‘othering’ and dehumanisation. Professor Gregory Stanton has developed an academic model outlining 10 stages of genocide, demonstrating that genocide is a process that develops in stages that are predictable – but not inevitable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. Learning about the Holocaust and more recent genocides can help to identify the warning signs in the world today.
The Holocaust was the attempt by the Nazis and their collaborators to destroy all Jewish people in Europe. Building on centuries of antisemitism, persecution of Jewish people began as soon as the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. Classification, dividing people into ‘us’ and ‘them’ followed with the Nuremberg laws that discriminated against Jews, stripping them of German citizenship. They were forced to wear yellow stars, a visual sign of the hatred which escalated to dehumanisation, polarisation, persecution and ultimately to the extermination of 6 million Jewish people.
In Milton Keynes, the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration is taking takes place in the Church of Christ the Cornerstone at 3 pm tomorrow afternoon (Sunday 26 January 2025). It usually takes place at the Milton Keynes Rose in Campbell Park, but the venue has been changed over the past 48 hours because of the adverse weather forecast for tomorrow. The ceremony will include readings relating to the Holocaust, music, songs, a time of silence and lighting candles to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
This year, 80 lit candles will mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January 1945.
The BBC is marking Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday (27 January 2025) and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau with a wide range of programming on television, radio and online, and full coverage of the Auschwitz Ceremony from Poland and commemorative events across the UK.
There will be coverage across BBC News and the BBC News channel throughout the day, following the main events and providing insight, context and sharing human stories.
Fiona Bruce will be live from Auschwitz for a special programme on BBC One from 2:30 pm, covering the commemoration ceremony at the camp. She will hear from a Holocaust survivor and speak to guests about the history and contemporary relevance of Auschwitz.
In the evening on BBC One and iPlayer from 7 pm, survivors and VIPs will attend a unique commemoration to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, hosted by Reeta Chakrabarti to remember the six million Jewish men, women and children brutally murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust and other victims of Nazi persecution.
The ceremony will also commemorate the people who were murdered in the genocide in Bosnia 30 years ago and in other more recent genocides. Through music, readings and personal testimony, the victims of these events will be remembered. Among those taking part in this event are cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, The Countess of Wessex’s String Orchestra and Rob Rinder.
Three new BBC television documentaries also explore the lasting impact of the Holocaust.
In What Happened at Auschwitz on BBC 1 and iPlayer (20 January, 8:30 pm), BBC journalist and award winning presenter Jordan Dunbar discovered how the Holocaust is a story that is being diluted nowadays through disinformation and cultural amnesia. He visited Auschwitz-Birkenau camp and met survivors who aive new interviews.
On BBC Two and iPlayer on Monday (27 January, 9 pm), a new feature documentary, The Last Musician of Auschwitz tells the story of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch who, at 99, is the only surviving member of the Women’s Orchestra at Auschwitz. The film features first-person testimony from Anita alongside musical performances around Auschwitz, including the UK broadcast premiere of Lullaby, composed at the camp by the Polish political prisoner Adam Kopyciński.
Later in the year, the historian Sir Simon Schama confronts the history of the Holocaust in the most personal and unflinching film of his career, Simon Schama: The Holocaust – 80 Years On. Despite a lifetime dedicated to documenting Jewish history, this film follows Simon Schama’s first-ever visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
On BBC Radio 3, listeners will hear artists and survivors with reflective music throughout the day. BBC Radio 3 Breakfast with Petroc Trelawny will be broadcast live from Auschwitz, remembering all the musicians affected by the Holocaust and starting a commemorative day of reflective music on the station. This includes a special Radio 3 In Concert edition featuring a commemorative composition, Jonathan Dove’s 2020 work In Exile, dedicated to cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfish, by the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
On BBC Radio 4, Katya Adler will co-present the Today programme live from Auschwitz on Monday and the Thought for the Day speaker will be the Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis. Elsewhere on Radio 4, Crossing Continents uncovers the truth behind the death marches, and anatomist and forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black investigates how the actions of Nazi-sponsored anatomists continue to be felt today in Shadow of War. Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg will travel with his nephew, BBC journalist Daniel Wittenberg, to retrace the final steps of two members of they family who perished in Auschwitz as part of Sunday Worship tomorrow morning.
Fiona Bruce will co-present the News at Six and News at Ten on location, and Jon Kay will co-present from Auschwitz for BBC Breakfast and the News at One.
Lucy Hockings will be on location for the BBC News Channel to follow events throughout the day, as well as events in the UK and around the world. The BBC News Channel will also simulcast the BBC One coverage of the Auschwitz ceremony from 2:30 pm.
Newsround is to broadcast a special bulletin with Emma-Louise Amanshia travelling to Auschwitz with a group of students to find out why they feel it is important to learn what happened there. BBC Teach is making Holocaust Memorial Day assembly packs available and the website is hosting a short film in which Emma-Louise Amanshia talks with John Hajdu about his experience of surviving the Holocaust.
The World Service range of programmes in the past week or so has included Documentary: Songs of Auschwitz, which uncovered the story of music and survival from Auschwitz (23 January), Heart and Soul: Kaddish: Why We Pray for the Dead, a documentary marking the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz (17 January) and Assignment: Death Marches: uncovering the truth beneath the soil (21 January).
Olivia Marks-Woldman of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, says: ‘Holocaust Memorial Day is a moment for us all to pause, reflect, and remember the six million Jewish men, women, and children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, while also honouring the victims of more recent genocides including in Bosnia 30 years ago. It’s a day with the power to touch hearts and inspire change.’
Eighty years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as living witnesses rely on us to carry forward their legacy, silence must not be an option.
Holocaust distortion, denial and trivialisation are all increasing. Holocaust denial is any attempt to deny the Holocaust happened, while Holocaust distortion is where the Holocaust is acknowledged to have happened, but the extent or nature of the Holocaust is questioned, minimised, trivialised or even inverted – for example, where Jews today are likened to Nazis. Holocaust denial and distortion are both forms of antisemitism and should be confronted.
This Holocaust Memorial Day, we all have an opportunity to take action for a better future, where people are not suffering prejudice or persecution because of their faith, ethnicity or other characteristic.
But a new study published this week shows that almost half of Americans cannot name a single Nazi death camp. The comprehensive survey conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany discovered a decline in Holocaust education among young people. It shows 48 per cent of US respondents are unable to name any of the concentration camps and ‘substantial portions’ are unaware of the six million figure.
I fear the political trends in the US and across Europe 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I plan to be at the Rose in Campbell Park tomorrow, still hoping that this generation carries forward the legacy of the witnesses, remember those who were murdered and challenge those who would distort or deny the past, or who discriminate and persecute today.
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