Holocaust Memorial Day 2025: On History’s “Application to the Present”

David Tollerton, Associate Professor in Memory Studies, University of Exeter

I write this on the morning of 27 January 2025, which marks 80 years since Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau. Chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, Laura Marks, nonetheless declares in The Times today that “the true power of HMD [Holocaust Memorial Day] lies in its application to the present … HMD is not about dwelling on the past; it is about learning from it.” From its inception in the late 1990s HMD was always conceived of in such terms, with its proposer in parliament, Labour MP Andrew Dismore, suggesting that the annual event would be one of the “building blocks of a civilised society.”

But in her Times article Marks is fairly unspecific about exactly how memory of the Holocaust should be applied to thinking about the present. When she writes of “remembering the horrors of the Holocaust and the other more recent genocides recognised by the government”, it is hard not to read “recognised by the government” as a caution against drawing in contentious parallels (widespread language of genocide in reference to Gaza being an obvious point of controversy).

Today’s Guardian editorial is less circumspect. If the Holocaust is invoked with reference to contemporary concerns, somebody has to play the role of would-be Nazis, and this left-leaning newspaper is unafraid to name-check Elon Musk, AFD leader Alice Weidel, and President Donald Trump in its warnings.   

Writing for The Jewish Chronicle, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has rather different targets in mind, suggesting that “while we reflect on the unimaginable horrors that antisemitism has wrought in the past, we must also confront the resurgence of antisemitism today … we see weekly marches spewing modern-day hatred of Jews. Antisemitism, often disguised as ‘anti-Zionism’, is prevalent on our streets and in our universities.” In this reading, it is amidst public protests against Israeli government actions in Gaza that we find echoes of the 1930s.

In response to a pick n’ mix of contemporary applications, we might sympathise with the chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Karen Pollock, complaining in The Times in March 2023 that “however passionately we feel about important and pressing issues of the day […] comparing those current concerns to the almost unimaginable horrors of the Nazi period is wrong.” But taking her words literally would seem to run against a core tenet of HMD (not to mention the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust and some of Pollock’s own statements on contemporary issues), namely that memory speaks to matters in the present.

Should we embrace the messiness of how the Holocaust is brought into dialogue with 21^st century issues, viewing it as an unavoidable side-effect of HMD’s concerted effort to bring commemoration into public consciousness? Doing so might be viewed as conceding too much ground what the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and other organisations refer to as “Holocaust distortion”, which includes “making inappropriate comparisons.” Somehow, therefore, there has to be debate about what invocations of the Holocaust are/aren’t acceptable, how all the swirling matters of context and intent are navigated, and who gets to decide.

But HMD itself is not always ideally suited for such debate. The tone of many HMD events understandably emphasises sombre ceremony and bold declarations. Among the boldest is “never again”. Following a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau a few days ago, Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke of his “determination … to do everything I can to make ‘never again’ mean what it says, and what it must truly mean: never again,” while a few days later Badenoch, as Leader of the Opposition, wrote of “ensuring that ‘never again’ truly means never again.”

But what does “never again” actually mean? Even before Britain’s first Holocaust Memorial Day in 2001 some commentators had noted how slippery the phrase can be. What, exactly, would amount to “again”? Does it refer to clear instances of genocide, or more specifically to antisemitic prejudice and violence, or to systemic racism and intolerance in more general terms (and at what scale and intensity)?

We might variously conclude that, on the one hand, “never again” is just empty rhetoric or, on the other, that it is a usefully open-ended aspiration that gestures to the possibility of a kinder world. HMD, given the tone and content of its events (the national ceremony aired on BBC One at 7pm is likely to be illustrative) is perhaps a day to be generous and opt for the latter  

But let no one pretend that the Holocaust’s “application to the present” will be always straightforward during the rest of the year. It will be sometimes strained and complicated, and figuring out the rights and wrongs of invoking the Holocaust will require discussion, frustration, disagreement, and work.