Newcastle’s Holocaust Memorial Day Programme
There are lots of events, exhibitions, talks and activities marking Holocaust Memorial Day (27th January) taking place in January, as well as some which run for longer. Click on the links below to find out more about these and read on to find out more about this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day theme of ‘Ordinary People’.
- A Wounded Landscape: Bearing Witness to the Holocaust – Exhibition (12 January-9 April at Side Gallery)
- Where Do You Sit? – Exhibition (20-25 January at Newcastle City Library)
- Brundibár Arts Festival – Opening Concert: Creativity and Totalitarianism (23 January at Jesmond United Reform Church)
- Look and don’t forget the ordinary people of the Roma Holocaust – Exhibition (23-30 January, West Fifteen Business Centre)
- The English Holocaust – Lecture (24 Jan at Newcastle City Library)
- Where Do You Sit? – Film (25 Jan at Newcastle City Library)
- How the world learnt about the Holocaust – Lecture (26 Jan at Bewick Hall, Newcastle City Library)
- Battle for Dignity: The Warsaw Ghetto Rising – Film and interactive talk (26 January, Denton Burn Library)
- Brundibár Arts Festival: Between Two Worlds – Narrated concert (26 Jan, Caedmon Hall, Gateshead)
- Marta Josephs – Talk (26 Jan, Discovery Museum and online)
- Shalom! (26 Jan-1 October, Discovery Museum)
- Where Do You Sit? – Radio Broadcast (27 Jan, Skimstone Radio)
- The Book Thief – Film and discussion (27 Jan, Newcastle City Library)
- A Place on Earth: Exhibition from the Holocaust Archives at Yad Vashem (27 Jan-10 Feb, Newcastle City Library)
- Commemorative Event: Presentation and Reflections on the Roma Holocaust (27 Jan, West Fifteen Business Centre)
- Testimonies from the Roma Holocaust – Film (27 Jan, West Fifteen Business Centre)
- Brundibár Arts Festival: Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) – Concert (28 Jan at The Globe, Newcastle)
- Holocaust Memorial Day Commemorative Event (29 Jan – invitation only at City Library)
- Brundibár Arts Festival: Forbidden Music Regained – Concert (29 Jan, Kings Hall, Newcastle University)
- A Wounded Landscape – Reception with Marc Wilson (4 Feb at Side Gallery)
- My Mother’s Story – Public talk (8 Feb at Lit and Phil)
Other ways to take part in Holocaust Memorial Day
As well as the events in Newcastle, Holocaust Memorial there are different and meaningful ways you can play a part on or around the day. From schools and libraries to workplaces and community centres Holocaust Memorial Day activities take place in a range of diverse settings. There are also a range of different ways that you can get involved including:
- Holocaust Memorial Day Online – By becoming part of the online conversation you can help spread messages of tolerance and understanding. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust has a range of resources to help you get involved in commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day online. Activities include book clubs, poetry writing and online ceremonies as well as sharing messages on social media to help people learn more about the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and more recent genocides.
- Light the Darkness – light a candle at 4pm 27th January 2023 to remember the victims of the Holocaust and other genocides. In Newcastle the Civic Centre will be lit as residents from across the city light candles in memory of victims of the Holocaust and other genocides, in tribute to the survivors and to take a stand against prejudice, discrimination and hatred today.
Ordinary People
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2023 is ‘Ordinary People‘. The theme will consider how Ordinary People were involved in all aspects of the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides.
Ordinary People were perpetrators and bystanders, witnesses and rescuers.
And those persecuted, oppressed and murdered were – are – also Ordinary People. They’re not criminals, they haven’t done anything wrong, they are just Ordinary People who belong to a particular group or community that their persecutors do not like.
“What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life – that is what is abnormal” – – Elie Wiesel, survivor of the Holocaust
In every genocide Ordinary People have choices. Those targeted face limited or ‘choiceless choices’ (Lawrence Langer). There are Ordinary People who decide to ignore what is going on around them, to be bystanders, who choose to allow genocide to happen and others who, because of fear or circumstance, made life threatening choices. And it is Ordinary People who actively perpetrate genocide, who go to extreme depths to cause harm, to persecute and to murder.
But in every genocide there are also extraordinary Ordinary People. Remarkable, unusual people, who see themselves as ordinary, who go to great lengths to help, to rescue and to save others, to stand up against genocide to end the horrors it brings.
The theme considers all the roles Ordinary People play in genocide while also thinking about how Ordinary People, like all of us, can play a bigger part than we could ever imagine in challenging the prejudice, discrimination and hatred that still exists in the world today.
Groups, communities and organisations, with support from the council, have created a moving tribute to those that lost their lives or suffered in the Holocaust and genocides that followed so that current and future generations can learn from the mistakes of the past.
Holocaust Memorial Day across the UK
You can find a full list of Holocaust Memorial Day activities that are taking place across the UK and register your own event on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Find out more at https://www.hmd.org.uk/activities
Further information and resources
- You can find out more about the Holocaust and genocide on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website here. You can also register for the UK online commemoration. There are memorial pages to those who were killed in the Holocaust.
- There is information about other genocides, including Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
- There are a wide range of free resources from lesson plans and assemblies to poems and films
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