Holocaust Memorial Day

Resource type: Event

Price band: £

Key stage: KS1, KS2, KS3, KS4, KS5

Region(s): All of UK

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place annually on the 27th January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. It is the day when the world comes together to remember and to learn about the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution and subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur in order to bear witness, promote understanding, and challenge prejudice and hatred.

The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2023 is ‘Ordinary People’. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust has created a number of resources for primary and secondary schools that can be used to explore the theme and support teaching and learning:

Theme Vision document that looks at different way to interpret this year’s theme.
Guidance documents to support teachers as they deliver Holocaust and genocide education to students of different ages and abilities.
Lesson Plans, Life Stories, ideas for assemblies and activities for tutor time.
Add your school to the online HMD map if you are taking part with your students.

Cost: Free

About the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust: The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is a charity established and funded by the UK Government to promote and support Holocaust Memorial Day in the the UK.

Further resources:

For books that explore the events surrounding the Holocaust, see BookTrust’s booklists for UKS2 and teenagers.
Fritz and Kurt is a retelling of the international bestseller The Boy Who Followed his Father into Auschwitz for young readers aged 9+. To accompany the book, author and historian Jeremy Dronfield has created a free comprehensive guide for teachers and parents with background information, prompts for discussion and links to further teaching resources to enable them to support young readers and help them get the most out of reading the book.
Find teaching notes for UKS2 and KS3 from the experts at Just Imagine to accompany Michael Rosen’s The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II here. You can also listen to Michael talking about the book on this In the Reading Corner podcast.
The National Holocaust Centre and Museum has developed a free app for iPad that follows the journey of Leo, a young German Jewish boy living in 1930s Berlin. The app is aimed at children aged 9+ and there are accompanying lesson plans.
The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education has a suite of KS3 lesson plans based around Tom Palmer’s novel After the War.
The Holocaust Educational Trust offers free resources to support both primary and secondary teachers, including their flagship resource Exploring the Holocaust for KS3/S2 pupils
Download a teaching pack for pupils aged 14-18 that draws on the Voices from the Holocaust online resource from the British Library. Voices from the Holocaust is a curated selection of extracts from the British Library’s collection of oral history interviews with Holocaust survivors, organised into key themes. View the full Voices from the Holocaust collection here.
LGfL, working with partner organisations such as The Wiener Holocaust Library, has created a portfolio of resources to support the delivery of Holocaust Education.
BBC Teach has a range of resources to support Holocaust Memorial Day for primary and secondary schools.