‘Be the light in the darkness’: council commemorates Holocaust Memorial Day

Residents encouraged to light a candle at home to mark this year’s theme 

Shropshire Council will be commemorating national Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday 27 January 2021, as in previous years, with an emphasis for the day around online ceremonies. This comes ahead of plans for continuing to grow a cherry tree orchard of remembrance across Shropshire.

This year’s theme ‘Be the light in the darkness’ focuses on asking people to reflect on the depths to which humanity can sink, and on the ways individuals and communities resisted that darkness to ‘be the light’ before, during and after genocide.

Take part in national Holocaust Memorial Day

To help mark the occasion, the council is encouraging people to take part in the UK Holocaust Memorial Day 2021 first fully digital ceremony which will be streamed online from 7pm to 8pm on Wednesday evening. This will be followed at 8pm by households across the UK lighting candles to put in their windows to remember those who were murdered for who they were, and to stand against prejudice and hatred today.

South Shropshire Interfaith Forum online memorial event

South Shropshire Interfaith Forum will also be hosting an online event on the evening of Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday 27 January. To find out more and to sign up to the event in advance, email them at info@ssif.org.uk

Gwilym Butler, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for communities, place planning and regulatory services, said:

“I would like to encourage everyone to take part in the national Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony and to light a candle at home if you are able to do so safely. This will then serve to commemorate the Holocaust and other genocides, and to demonstrate that in Shropshire these are not forgotten.

“If people are able at all to take part in the South Shropshire Interfaith Forum, I am sure that they will be pleased to welcome your participation as well.”

Shropshire Archives also will be exhibiting some of the first-hand accounts of Shropshire soldiers who saw the atrocities of the Holocaust and the local response here in the county. The team have worked with the rurality and equalities specialist at the council to produce an online resource pack to help people to find out more about local efforts in Shropshire during World War Two. This has also gone to primary schools and to secondary schools.

Holocaust Memorial Cherry Tree Orchard 

Local primary schoolpupils will be continuing to help to grow a Holocaust Memorial cherry tree orchard across Shropshire in 2021. 

Cherry tree planted in 2015 at Mereside CE Primary School in Shrewsbury

Gwilym Butler continued:- 

“We are continuing to grow our Holocaust cherry tree orchard of remembrance across the county, with the help of local primary school children and the interfaith forums in the county.

“This year, due to the pandemic and the ongoing lockdown, we’ve had to change the timings for the tree-planting ceremonies. This has provided an opportunity to mark further key dates with regard not only to the Holocaust and those who survived and those who did not, but also to the more recent genocide in Srebrenica in 1995.”

To find out more and sign up to the UK Holocaust Memorial Day 2021 visit https://www.hmd.org.uk/uk-holocaust-memorial-day-2021-ceremony/. You will need to register first to receive the link in advance of the ceremony. People will be encouraged to post their photos of their candles on line using the hashtags #HolocaustMemorialDay #LightTheDarkness.

The photo shows the three-wick candle used by the council in its ceremonies with schools, which illustrates the three world faiths working together.

Holocaust Memorial Day candle

You can find out more about the Holocaust Memorial Cherry Tree Orchard project and the other work being undertaken to commemorate Holocaust Day here. 

Further information 

About Holocaust Memorial Day

Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated on 27 January – a date that marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest concentration camp in occupied Poland. It is a day for everyone to remember the six million Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust; the millions of people killed under Nazi persecution, including from the Roma and Sinti community; and those killed in genocides which followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.

This year’s theme is ‘Be the light in the darkness’. It encourages everyone to reflect on the depths to which humanity can sink, but also the ways individuals and communities resisted that darkness to ‘be the light’ before, during and after genocide.

Be the light in the darkness is an affirmation and a call to action for everyone marking Holocaust Memorial Day. This theme asks people to consider different kinds of ‘darkness’, for example, identity-based persecution, misinformation, denial of justice; and different ways of ‘being the light’, for example, resistance, acts of solidarity, rescue and illuminating mistruths.

Holocaust memorial resource pack

Shropshire Archives and Shropshire Council colleagues have produced a Holocaust Memorial Day 2021 online resource pack, available on the website at www.shropshire.gov.uk

This is focused on:-

• The British forces’ liberation of Bergen-Belsen, for which we have regimental records including an eye witness statement and a contemporary bilingual statement in German and English about the atrocities perpetrated at that camp; and
• Efforts within Shropshire through the Mayor of Shrewsbury’s Committee for Jewish refugee children, and through the records relating to Bunce Court School for German Jewish refugee children. This last has been produced as a separate Word document which may be used with all schools, as it does not contain material that would be distressing to the younger age groups.