Holocaust Memorial Day 2024: Organisers hope to bring ‘healing’ to Jewish and Muslim communities

An interfaith activist says she hopes this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day will bring healing to London’s Jewish and Muslim communities as the conflict continues between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East.

Laura Marks CBE, chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, says the world feels “more fragile than ever” this year as the tension in the Middle East has spilled onto the streets in London with hate crime on the rise.

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place every year on January 27 to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, as well as genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia and Darfur. This year will marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda..

The theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK is the “fragility of freedom”.

Ms Marks is co-founder of Nisa-Nashim - a network which brings together Jewish and Muslim women to encourage social change - and of the annual Mitzvah Day social action project.

“This year, the world feels more fragile than ever. People are continuing to target each other because of who they are rather than ending in 1945 - it certainly didn't - which is tragic,” she told LondonWorld.

Since Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7 2023, and the military response that followed, hate crime in London and the UK has been on the rise.

According to data obtained by the PA news agency, antisemitic hate crimes recorded by the Metropolitan Police since Hamas’s attack rose to more than 13 times the number during the same period in 2022. A total of 679 antisemitic offences were recorded by the Met Police from October 7 to November 7, compared with 50 in the equivalent period the previous year and 81 in 2021.

The data shows a rise in Islamophobic attacks, with 258 recorded in the month following October 7, compared with 73 in 2022 and 72 in 2021.

“Antisemitic attacks have gone up enormously, depending on which source you follow - but massively. It is also worth saying that anti-Muslim attacks have also gone up,” said Ms Marks.

“What's happening is that the conflict is being sort of imported to our streets here, with communities sort of polarising, taking the blame for what's going on in the Middle East. 

“People are going into their own world rather than coming together in London, which is a fantastically multicultural city, and on Holocaust Memorial Day we are really hoping to be able to bring a little bit of healing to that pain.”

Ms Marks, who has spent the last 20 years working in interfaith relations says she has been hugely affected since the events of October 7.

“I think like so many other people, I am devastated. I'm devastated by the attack by Hamas on Israel, I'm devastated by the loss of life, and the way the conflict is playing out in Gaza. So personally, I'm hugely affected by it. 

“And my work is hugely affected by it, as you say, because you're in the world of interfaith relations. It's so hard to stop people polarising. 

“It's so hard to get people to see that our hearts are big enough to take the pain of both sides. I can grieve for every person who is affected by this terrible conflict."

She continued: “I'm busy, trying to encourage people to feel the pain wherever it is, and to express it. Maybe all we can do right now is to acknowledge how much everyone's hurting.”

Holocaust Memorial Day is on Saturday January 27.

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is inviting people to join commemorations by lighting a candle in their windows that evening, as part of its Light the Darkness campaign, which will see landmarks across the UK illuminated in purple.