Hundreds attend our resources launch for HMD 2022
Yesterday we launched our new resources for Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) 2022 at a special online event.
We were delighted to be joined by hundreds of people, including Holocaust and genocide survivors, HMD activity organisers, civil servants and many who were completely new to organising HMD activities.
HMD is for everyone – and anyone can organise their own local HMD commemoration.
Attendees learned about our new resources and heard inspiring talks relevant to the themes explored in the resources.
Our Chief Executive, Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE said:
I hope that none of you will lose sight of the fact that all your activities will make an immense difference to the people who attend them, whether you’ll be doing an in-person event or an online event. Your event will make sure people learn more, that they increase their knowledge…. And in coming to your event, they will understand the resonances today… They will understand the impact that those atrocities had on individuals, and they will increase their empathy towards other people today.
Click below to see each new resource and life story, which can be downloaded for free to use in HMD activities.
- Sharif Barko’s life story
- The Babi Yar massacre life story
- Days to remember
- Primary Kindertransport lesson plan
- Secondary Kindertransport lesson plan
To mark the launch of our new Kindertransport lesson plans, Vera Schaufeld MBE and Lord Dubs, who both came to the UK on the Kindertransport, joined us at the event to speak about their experiences.
Lord Dubs spoke powerfully about what we can learn from the Kindertransport:
(Nicholas Winton) was invited to go to Prague to see what was happening and he could have said “how awful” and walked away. The difference is that he didn’t walk away. The difference is that he felt he had to do something and that differentiates between people who are going to change things and people who are simply going to say “this is awful”, and Nicholas Winton, essentially, did not walk away. Essentially, he said he was going to do something.
Below is a video of Vera speaking to our HMD 2021 Gedenkdiener, Jakob Riegler, about her experience of antisemitism (anti-Jewish hatred) before traveling to the UK on the Kindertransport as a child:
