Holocaust education on campus can take multiple forms to suit your campus. Traditionally, Holocaust commemoration falls around Holocaust Memorial Day and Yom HaShoah but you are not restricted to these days and Holocaust education can happen all year round. There are a multitude of ways that you can commemorate on campus at any date or time - whatever is most convenient for students. Don’t worry if you’ve never organised an event before, we’re here to help you along the way by providing ideas and resources to use.
Here is all the activity and different organisations you can engage with and how you can commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day 2024.
Exhibition on your campus
Please click here to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 on campus with an exhibition. This is an easy way of engaging the wider student body in the timeline of the Holocaust.
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT)
HMDT have a huge number of resources for students to use to mark HMD on campus.
- Order 'About HMD' booklets, pin badges, stickers or commemorative HMD candles to be used as part of your HMD events here.
- Download the Get Involved Guide for Universities
- Use this short film which can be screened as part of HMD activities, featuring exclusive content from the HMD 2023 UK Online Commemoration. It can be downloaded for free from here.
- To maximise publicity around your HMD event, why not invite your local MP? We have a template invitation letter which can be downloaded from here.
- To fit with the theme of Ordinary People, HMDT have published the story of Marcel Hoffman on the website. You could use this story, or one of the many others which can be found in our resources hub as part of your HMD event. If you would like to use a life story in film media, we have a beautiful 6 minute animated video of Ivor Perl discussing family, memory and hope – and how the lessons of the past can shape our future.
- Iconic buildings and landmarks will light up in purple during this powerful national moment of commemoration and solidarity. For more information please click here
Generation 2 Generation
Generation 2 Generation (G2G) aims to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are learned: the need for tolerance, empathy and understanding of all groups in society; the fact that prejudice and discrimination can motivate genocide.
G2G provides speakers who retell their parents and grandparents’ stories and experiences before and during the Holocaust. Our speakers are able to present to a variety of age groups, online or face-to-face, integrating first-hand video and audio testimony, photos and other artefacts to engage the students.
To find out more about their work, click here.
Learning and Commemoration
Understanding the Holocaust: A Student Perspective is an interactive processing session that can be done individually or in groups
Student Project - Teenage Victims of Nazi Persecution
Resource: Through this resource put together by Nottingham student Eli Sassoon and Oxford student Barnabas Balint, participants can explore the stories of twelve ordinary young victims of the Holocaust through different media, developing empathy with them through discussion about their lives.
Teenagers and young adults experienced the Holocaust through a different lens to other older and younger victims. Sometimes they were treated like adults and sometimes like children, but the unifying experience was that these victims had their developing years taken from them as they attempted to survive Nazi persecution. It can be facilitated as an exhibition or as a workshop - with each poster being a standalone story. No previous knowledge of the Holocaust is needed to participate in this activity.
Resource: Teenage Victims of Nazi Persecution |
Guide: Teenage Victims of Nazi Persecution |
This was put together for the Youth Forum of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust