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HMD 2025: For a Better Future

HMD 2025: For a Better Future

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The Holocaust and genocides

Holocaust Memorial Day is the day for everyone to remember the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of people murdered under Nazi persecution of other groups, and in more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

The Holocaust

Between 1941 and 1945, six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. Their attempt to murder all the Jews in Europe, shook the foundations of civilisation.

Learn about the Holocaust

Nazi Persecution

The Nazis targeted anyone they believed threatened their ideal of a ‘pure Aryan race’, including Roma and Sinti people, disabled people, gay people, political opponents and others.

Learn about Nazi persecution

Cambodia

From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, imposed an extremist programme to reconstruct Cambodia. Millions of people died through starvation, disease and exhaustion, and thousands were executed.

Learn about Cambodia

Rwanda

In a violent outpouring in 1994, approximately one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in just 100 days in the Genocide in Rwanda.

Learn about Rwanda

Bosnia

In July 1995, against the backdrop of an ongoing civil war, Bosnian Serb forces led by Ratko Mladić murdered around 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica.

Learn about Bosnia

Darfur

In 2003 a civil war began in the region of Darfur. Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed attacked black African people, destroying entire villages, murdering civilians and displacing many more.

Learn about Darfur

Life Stories

The experiences of Holocaust and genocide survivors, as well as those who were murdered, give us a unique insight into the lives of those who have endured persecution.

Explore our collection of life stories
Yisrael Abelesz The Holocaust

Yisrael Abelesz

Yisrael Abelesz was just 14 years old when he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous of all Nazi camps. Whilst there he escaped selection for the gas chambers and survived typhoid and a death march.

Marianne Grant The Holocaust

Marianne Grant

Marianne Grant was a young artist from Prague. Having survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the final days of Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, using her skills as an artist to survive, she came to Glasgow where she raised her family.

Sabina Kadić-Mackenzie Bosnia

Sabina Kadić-Mackenzie

Sabina had a happy childhood in Bosnia until the Bosnian War forced her family to flee the county. They travelled at first to Slovenia, before they were finally resettled in the UK. Now living in Scotland, Sabina is a social justice campaigner focused on the rights of refugees and people who have experienced homelessness.

Tomi Komoly BEM The Holocaust

Tomi Komoly BEM

Tomi Komoly, born in Budapest in 1936, survived the Holocaust in hiding with his Mother. Post-war, he struggled under Communist rule, leading Tomi to escape to Austria in 1956. He completed his education, reunited with his mother, and was awarded a British Empire Medal in 2020 for his contributions to Holocaust education.