Holocaust memorial day events in UK drop nearly 60%, raising alarm over growing silence

While more than 2,000 schools held events marking Holocaust Memorial Day on Jan. 27, 2023, that number dropped to just 854 in 2025, falling by almost 60% according to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel – and the war in Gaza that followed – matters concerning Israel and the Jewish people have become highly controversial, reflected in the sharp decline in the number of British secondary schools willing to take part in International Holocaust Memorial Day. However, Jewish voices have spoken out about the importance of resisting pressure to stay silent about the Holocaust.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote in the Sunday Times that he fears “for what will happen this year” and that Holocaust Memorial Day “is not a platform for political debate. It is not an endorsement of any government, perspective, or conflict. It is an act of human memory. To insist that it must justify itself by reference to today’s headlines is to fundamentally misunderstand it.” He insisted that “civic education in its most urgent form.”

Rabbi Mirvis, understanding why so many had decided to skip marking the day, put himself in the place of teachers pressured to include the suffering of other groups, rather than just focusing on what happened to the Jewish people in the Holocaust.

“Imagine that as you begin to organize such an event, you learn that some parents of pupils at your school are unhappy about it,” he wrote. “One of the claims that Holocaust education is a form of “propaganda”; another insists that the event must not go ahead unless it also highlights the awful suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.”

Steven Silverman, director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said on Talk TV, “I don't think is unreasonable to assume that it's the same extremist views that were on show in the West Midlands Police, that are trying to prevent schools from showing respect, remembrance, and sympathy, for the Jewish people, for an utterly unique and never heard of trauma that took place during the Nazi occupation of Europe.”

He continued, “It is astonishing that for all the work that has been done on Holocaust remembrance, for the very purpose of ensuring that it can't happen again, not just to Jews, but to anybody, to shut this down because there are people who will be offended by it.” 

International Holocaust Memorial Day is marked on Jan. 27 each year, commemorating the date on which the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated.

“Honouring Jewish victims of genocide does not diminish compassion for any other people,” Mirvis stated. “On the contrary, it enlarges it, because collective memory is not a finite resource. The lesson of the Holocaust is not that Jewish suffering matters more, but that Jewish suffering matters at all. And that when Jews are dehumanised and attacked, it is a sign that our entire society is experiencing a fundamental moral malaise.”

Holocaust memorial events in the UK have increasingly included other genocides and tragedies around the world, detracting from the uniqueness of the event. However, with awareness of the historical facts surrounding the Holocaust declining, such memorials are more important than ever. 

In neighboring Ireland, about half of the adult population surveyed said they were not aware that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Furthermore, almost one in 12 young adults believed the Holocaust to be a “myth,” according to a survey published by The Irish Times.

In a statement, the European Jewish Congress (EJC) said on Monday, “Avoiding commemoration out of fear of controversy undermines the very purpose of education. When remembrance becomes optional, memory itself becomes fragile.”

The EJC continued, “Now is precisely the moment when Holocaust education matters most: when misinformation spreads easily, when antisemitism is openly visible, and when fewer survivors remain to bear witness. Schools play a vital role in preserving this memory, not only for Jewish communities, but for society as a whole.”