A flag raising ceremony on 27 January by South Kesteven District Council on St Peter’s Hill is marking Holocaust Memorial Day 2022 under this year’s theme of ‘One Day’.
The day marks the date in 1945 of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi extermination camp of World War 2, and specifically chosen to encourage people to come together in a world scarred by genocide.
Speaking at the flag raising, SKDC Chairman Cllr Breda-Rae Griffin said; “It is important to remember and learn about the Holocaust and the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur, in the hope that perhaps One Day in the future there will be no more genocide.
“Concentrating on One Day is a way for us to learn more about what happened. We hope that when we learn more about the past, we learn how to recognise the signs, empathise with the trauma people have gone and continue to go through, and create a better future.”
Deputy SKDC Chairman Cllr Helen Crawford reminded guests of significant “One Days”. They included 9 April 1943, when the Jewish inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto fought back against the Nazi Regime amidst the horrors of the ghettos set up following the German invasion of Poland in 1940.
Another was 17 April 1975, when the Khmer Rouge entered the Cambodian capital and brought five years of terror that resulted in more than two million people murdered and others subjected to four years of slave labour and terror.
