Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) takes place every year on 27 January. Find out about UCL events marking the day, as well as key resources and further information.
Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) is an annual, global day of observance held in remembrance of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and its collaborators during the Holocaust, alongside millions of others killed under Nazi persecution and during later genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
HMD invites us all to remember and honour the victims and survivors of genocide, and calls on people and governments around the world to reaffirm our commitment to preventing such atrocities from happening in the future.
The theme for 2026 is ’Bridging generations’. With the passing of time, the memory of the Holocaust and other genocides becomes more distant and there is a risk that the reality of these appalling events will become blunted, abstract or even questioned. This year’s theme reminds us that all’of us are responsible for remembrance, and for ensuring that we engage actively with, and learn from, the events of the past. Find out more about this year’s theme on the HMD website.
Our current list of scheduled events is below, alongside key resources around Holocaust education. If you are hosting a UCL event for Holocaust Memorial Day that you’d like to add to this page, get in touch with us here.
UCL normally takes part in the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s #LightTheDarkness campaign, where buildings are illuminated in purple lights to mark HMD. Due to the ongoing works in the Quad, we will not be able to light the Portico purple this year, but will do so again in future years.
Events
22 January, 6.30-9pm: UCL JSoc and Students’ Union UCL Holocaust Memorial Day event
Join UCL students in commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day 2026 and hear the testimony of Holocaust survivor John Hajdu MBE.
22 January, 7-9pm: An interview with Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich MBE
Join us online on 22 January 2026 to hear Mala share her extraordinary story, followed by live Q&A. This event is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge Professional and Continuing Education and University College London. The interview will be conducted by Professor Gilly Carr OBE, Professor of Conflict Archaeology and Holocaust Heritage, PACE and Ruth-Anne Lenga, Associate Professor, University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education.
27 January, 1.30-2.30pm: Holocaust Memorial Day Lunch Hour Lecture - A Long Road: Italian Holocaust Survivors’ Journeys Home
Join us for this Lunch Hour Lecture with Anna Koch, DAAD Francis Carsten Lecturer in Modern German History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University College London. Find out more and sign up for the Lunch Hour Lecture here.
28 January, 6.30pm: Holocaust Memorial Day Event with Mala Tribich MBE
UCL Friends of Israel Society is co-hosting an event with Israel Societies from other London universities at Kings College London Strand campus. Sign up to the event at KCL here.
Recordings and resources
Previous Lunch Hour Lectures for Holocaust Memorial Day
Voicing the Destruction of European Jewry: Yiddish and the Holocaust (2025) : Dr Sonia Gollance, Associate Professor in Yiddish Studies, UCL Hebrew & Jewish Studies.
Telling the Story (2024) : Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich MBE and Ruth-Anne Lenga of UCL’s Centre for Holocaust Education in conversation with Dr Michael Spence, UCL.
Together & apart: Remembering Jewish Ukraine in the context of empire and war (2023) , delivered by Uilleam Blacker, Associate Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies at UCL SSEES.
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