Torn from home is the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2019.
There are activities across the capital to mark this important day. Some of the borough events are listed below. Find an activity near you on the HMD site.
Holocaust Memorial Day is the day for everyone to remember the millions of people murdered in the Holocaust, under Nazi Persecution, and in the genocides which followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.
Torn from home encourages us to reflect on how the enforced loss of a safe place to call ‘home’ is part of the trauma faced by anyone experiencing persecution and genocide. ‘Home’ usually means a place of safety, comfort and security. On HMD 2019 people across the UK will reflect on what happens when individuals, families and communities are driven out of, or wrenched from their homes, because of persecution or the threat of genocide, alongside the continuing difficulties survivors face as they try to find and build new homes when the genocide is over.
HMD 2019 will include marking the 25th anniversary of the Genocide in Rwanda, which began in April 1994 and the 40th anniversary of the end of the Genocide in Cambodia, which ended in 1979. HMD activity organisers may particularly want to acknowledge this milestone anniversary, and reflect on how this theme impacts on members of the Rwandan and Cambodian communities.
Safet was 16 when Muslim men and boys began being taken away to concentration camps. He remembers his father and brother being ordered out of the house, and his mother stopped him from going with them. He came to England with his mother, and later his father and brother joined them.
Safet is holding a school photograph, taken in 1982 when he was six years old, before the war started.
‘It was a really mixed group in terms of religion. We were kids and we didn’t think of religion at all. I have chosen this [photograph] because it shows how things were before, and it just reminds me. It would be nice to be able to go back to how it used to be. It can be done, I’m 100% certain. We have no problems between ourselves, it’s the politicians making these problems, and that’s the most frustrating thing.
‘It’s important to keep the memory alive, because some people are just not aware of what was happening in Bosnia, it’s a surprise to me. People were dying in concentration camps, torture took place, in Europe, in the 90s. Everyone thought that once World War II was over that wouldn’t happen again, but it did.
Click on the dates for borough HMD 2019 events. If you know of others, please add a comment to this post with details. A map of activities is on the HMD site.
- Barking & Dagenham: Monday 28 January
- Barnet: Sunday 27 January
- Brent: Thursday 24 January
- Camden (Jewish Museum): Friday 25 January
- Croydon: Monday 28 January
- Ealing: Friday 25 January
- Greenwich: Monday 28 January
- Hackney: Monday 28 January
- Haringey: Sunday 27 January
- Havering: Sunday 27 January
- Hillingdon: Friday 25 January
- Islington: Monday 28 January
- Kensington & Chelsea: Tuesday 29 January
- Kingston upon Thames: Sunday 27 January
- Lambeth: Sunday 27 January
- Lewisham: Sunday 27 January
- Merton: Tuesday 22 January
- Newham: Friday 25 January
- Redbridge: Monday 28 January
- Sutton: Friday 25 January
- Tower Hamlets: Thursday 24 & Sunday 27 January
London Boroughs Faiths Network 