VIDEO: Exeter Cathedral hosts Holocaust Memorial Day service

Exeter Cathedral hosted a memorial service on Tuesday to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, remembering the victims of the Holocaust and more recent genocides.

The service took place at 10am and marked the 25th anniversary of Holocaust Memorial Day, which was first commemorated in the UK in 2001.

This year’s theme, Bridging Generations, focuses on the responsibility of remembrance being passed from survivors to younger generations, encouraging people to engage with the past and carry its lessons into the future.

Guest speakers at the service included Liz Small, representing the Devon Romani community; David Tollerton, Associate Professor in Memory Studies and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Exeter; and Tim Locke, who shared the story of Ruth and Raimund Neumeyer.

Holocaust Memorial Day marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, and commemorates the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust, as well as the millions more killed under Nazi persecution. It also remembers victims of genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.