London,
11
January
2009
|
23:00
Europe/London
Take part in Holocaust Memorial Day 2009
RESIDENTS are invited to mark Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday, 27 January, at a ceremony to be held in Hackney Town Hall Square.
At 10.45am the Speaker of Hackney, Cllr Ian Rathbone, will lay a floral tribute at the Holocaust Memorial Tree.
The theme of this year’s event, which takes place on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1945, is Stand Up to Hatred, as Holocaust Memorial Day also remembers victims of more recent genocides, including in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.
Pupils from the borough’s schools and representatives from The Learning Trust will also be attending.
Cllr Rathbone said: “It is important that young people come to know and understand about the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance. Pupils from Hackney schools will be contributing to the day’s events - this includes building on their engagement with the Anne Frank story, recently screened as a BBC1 drama.
"On Holocaust Memorial Day 2009 we are inviting people to make the choice to Stand up to Hatred. That means being committed to not standing by and allowing others to commit acts of hatred, to report hate crime and stop yourself and others using discriminatory language. It means to challenge newspapers and public figures when they are using the language of hatred. We also need to continue to learn from history that the result of such hatred, prejudice and discrimination going unchecked and unchallenged can lead to genocide.”
At 10.45am the Speaker of Hackney, Cllr Ian Rathbone, will lay a floral tribute at the Holocaust Memorial Tree.
The theme of this year’s event, which takes place on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1945, is Stand Up to Hatred, as Holocaust Memorial Day also remembers victims of more recent genocides, including in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.
Pupils from the borough’s schools and representatives from The Learning Trust will also be attending.
Cllr Rathbone said: “It is important that young people come to know and understand about the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance. Pupils from Hackney schools will be contributing to the day’s events - this includes building on their engagement with the Anne Frank story, recently screened as a BBC1 drama.
"On Holocaust Memorial Day 2009 we are inviting people to make the choice to Stand up to Hatred. That means being committed to not standing by and allowing others to commit acts of hatred, to report hate crime and stop yourself and others using discriminatory language. It means to challenge newspapers and public figures when they are using the language of hatred. We also need to continue to learn from history that the result of such hatred, prejudice and discrimination going unchecked and unchallenged can lead to genocide.”