Learning from the past ~ lessons for today - Holocaust Education ...

Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration 2003 - 2012
A Decade of Development in
Holocaust Remembrance in Ireland
This is the tenth Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration
to take place in the Republic of Ireland. Speaking of the
importance of Holocaust remembrance, at the first HMD
Commemoration in City Hall, Dublin on 26 January 2003,
the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr. Dermot Lacey, said: “Only
by remembering the horrors that man is capable of
inflicting on man will we truly learn the lessons for today
as we strive to eradicate the scourge of racism,
xenophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance from our
midst.”
The HMD Committee’s theme for the 2003
Commemoration, Learning from the past – lessons for
today, became the motto for the development of
Holocaust education and remembrance in Ireland. The
establishment of Holocaust Education Trust Ireland (HETI)
in 2005 marked a significant step in confirming Holocaust
education as a national objective. Launching HETI in
September 2005 President Mary McAleese said that for
future generations, “the lesson of the Holocaust is
probably the most important lesson they will ever learn.”
In her address to the 2009 HMD Commemoration
President McAleese described the Holocaust as “an
unprecedented act of inhumanity involving an attempt at
the extermination of an entire race of people.”
Raising Holocaust education and awareness (except within
the Jewish community) in Ireland became a challenge for
HETI. In 2007, Ireland had taken sufficient steps to initiate
a three-stage process to attain full membership of the 38
member inter-governmental Task Force on International
Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and
Research (ITF). This organisation was established in
January 2000 under the Stockholm International Forum on
the Holocaust and Ireland achieved ‘Full Membership’
status in December 2011.
We can feel some satisfaction at the progress that has been
achieved in the decade since we assembled in Dublin City
Hall for Ireland’s first HMD Commemoration in 2003. The
foundations for promoting Holocaust education,
awareness and remembrance have been carefully laid. The
next stage is to build on them and truly learn the lessons
for today.
Holocaust Memorial Day Committee
During the Holocaust, six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators of whom one and a
half million were children. The Nazis particularly targeted the children in an attempt to destroy the future of the
Jewish people. Other groups were also targeted: people with mental and physical disabilities, Poles, Slavs, ethnic
and mixed race people, Roma, homosexuals, political opponents of the regime, Jehovah’s witnesses, Christians of
all denominations, and thousands of people who risked their lives to save Jews.
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