Since 1997 Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) has commemorated those murdered during the Holocaust, including six million Jewish people, and the millions more murdered through Nazi persecution and more recent genocides such as Cambodia (1975-79), Rwanda (1994), Bosnia (1995) and Darfur (2003).
HMD takes place each year on 27th January, the date in 1945 that the largest of the Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated. This year’s commemoration is especially poignant as it marks 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
2025 also marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.
Holocaust Memorial Day Assembly
An assembly-length PowerPoint to commemorate this year’s HMD
We have created a range of resources to help you in planning your HMD assembly and/or in delivering Holocaust-related content in a safe and supportive learning environment.
Here we highlight three of the lessons from our unit Teaching Holocaust and Human Behaviour to support in your preparation for Holocaust Memorial Day.
“ …these are the best resources available to teach this subject. It’s such a challenging subject yet offers really rich opportunities to learn from history…how can we understand what and why this happened and give our young people the opportunity to engage with the difficult stuff around this? That’s what our job is all about here, and I think Facing History does this so well with this material. “ - Facing History teacher and Head of Department
Selected Lessons from Teaching Holocaust and Human Behaviour
The theme of HMD 2025 is ‘For A Better Future’, which encourages us to take action and look forward with positivity. In order to do this we must explore the past to gain a deeper understanding of what happens when prejudice becomes prevalent, and therefore become more able to recognise and challenge all forms of racism and discrimination today.
For support in Discussing Contemporary Antisemitism in the Classroom, please see our four-lesson unit for use in Religious Studies, PSHE, History and English lessons.
