Sun, 24 Jan
|Online Event
Holocaust Memorial Day 2021
The Lord Mayor of Leeds will open this year’s civic remembrance event which will commemorate the lives of the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust, and millions more people killed under German Nazi persecution, and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia.
Time & Location
24 Jan 2021, 14:00 – 27 Jan 2021, 23:59
Online Event
About the Event
The theme for the 2021 event is ‘be the light in the darkness’ and there will be a keynote speech by Dr Alessandro Bucci, Co-director of the Holocaust Learning & Exhibition Centre, University of Huddersfield, and Ben Barkow, Chair of the Holocaust Survivors' Friendship Association.
The event includes a virtual reading of WH Auden’s poem Refugee Blues by young people from Carriageworks Young Theatre Makers, the Breeze Arts Foundation at Leeds Playhouse, Opera North Youth Chorus and Pyramid. For further details about these groups, please see below.
There will be a reading of the seven statements of commitments with candle lighting, by representatives of different groups persecuted including Holocaust survivors, people with additional needs, the LGBT+ community and Remembering Srebrenica. The event closes with a traditional Hebrew memorial prayer sung by the President of Bradford Synagogue, Rudi Leavor, BEM.
There will be an opportunity to light a candle at the end of the ceremony, so please have one ready if you would like to do this.
This online event will include British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters and will be available to watch from 2pm on Sunday 24 January to 11.59pm on Wednesday 27 January.