New HMD 2027 Theme
Theme for 2027: No Place for Prejudice:
The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2027, ‘No Place for Prejudice’, encourages a dual approach to action.
Firstly, through a historical lens, examining how prejudice shaped and enabled the Holocaust. Secondly, as an urgent moral challenge for today, recognising that prejudice is not only a feature of the past, but a present and growing reality that demands action. Using the theme to recognise where prejudice still operates, including within institutions meant to protect people. Prejudice is not only overt hatred. It includes everyday assumptions, exclusions, hierarchies and silences that normalise discrimination. Understanding the origins of prejudice explains why the Holocaust did not emerge suddenly in 1933. It was rooted in centuries of antisemitism across Europe; ideas about belonging, exclusion, and whose lives mattered.
The theme invites reflection on how prejudice is learned, reinforced, embedded in so many places: in culture, law, religion, education, community life and in social and leisure spaces, and excused as normal or inevitable.
Speaking about the new theme, Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said:
“The 2027 theme invites us to reflect on how prejudice against Jewish people (antisemitism) was normalised and embedded in cultural, legal, social and educational places in the lead-up to the Holocaust. It alerts us to where prejudice – against Jewish people and against other minorities – can be seen today. It challenges us to stop excusing prejudice as ‘inevitable’ and instead creates space for thoughtful, informed dialogue on how we can build a society with no place for hate. As antisemitism and other forms of prejudice increasingly plague our societies, we must do more. History shows that prejudice grows when tolerated and diminishes when individuals and institutions take responsibility. We must remember the past to protect the future.”