Derby Cathedral to mark Holocaust Memorial Day with Commemorative Services of Remembrance and Hope

Each year the international community marks Holocaust Memorial Day on or around the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on 27^th January 1945. Every year there are two services in Derby Cathedral. This year the services will be held on Thursday 25th January.

The first service, at 14:30 includes an act of commemoration on Derby’s Cathedral Green where stones are laid around trees planted in memory of Olga Nahlak, who became a citizen of Derby after hiding Jews from persecution by the Nazis, and Anne Frank who died in the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp three months short of her sixteenth birthday.

The second service, starting at 18:00, as well as commemorating all who died in the Holocaust and other genocides from the beginning of 20^th Century is a service of remembrance and hope. This year the Bishop of Repton will be preaching, and the theme of the service is the ‘fragility of freedom’. The service will reflect how freedom is fragile and often vulnerable to abuse.

The service is organised by a Derby-based group that works within the framework of the national Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) Trust, and they write: ‘As we come together, may we pledge not to take our freedom for granted, and to consider what we can do to strengthen freedoms around the world’.

These two acts of remembrance are supported and hosted by Derby Cathedral. This year we shall be joined by local and national dignitaries and also by students from the Royal School for the Deaf, St Benedict’s Catholic Voluntary Academy and Anthony Gell School, Wirksworth.