Holocaust Memorial Day 2023
City of Edinburgh Civic Reception to Commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day:
We invite you to join us as we pay our respects to those who lost their lives in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides and attempt to learn the lessons from humanities dark past.
We are pleased to announce a late addition, to the City of Edinburgh Holocaust Memorial Day Programme. Our main speaker will now be Umutesi Marie Jeanne survivor of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi who we hope will be joined by one of her sisters all the way from Rwanda who Umutesi helped to rescue during the genocide.
Umutesi was born near the small city of Gyseni, Rwanda, in 1984. When the genocide engulfed the country in 1994 she fled her home with her mother, brother and two younger sisters. She spent the next four years on a dangerous march for survival through the jungles of Congo, during which time her mother and brother were murdered. She shares her powerful testimony in order to promote peace and reconciliation through applying the lessons of Rwanda.
Umutesi has a message of hope. She explains, “we should not be slaves of our past but learn from it to shape a better future”.
In today’s programme we also hope to share extracts from the Scotland’s National Online Holocaust Memorial Day Programme which EIFA has been busy putting together for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Scottish Government.
Scotland’s National Online Holocaust Memorial Day Programme 2023:
This year there will be both an in-person Holocaust Memorial Day programme to be held at the Scottish Parliament on the 26th of January and a separate online programme to be broadcast online on the 27th.
Here you are invited to view the online programme which will be available from 10am on the 27th of January 2023 on the Edinburgh Interfaith Youtube Channel.
In the programme we pay our respects to those who lost their lives in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides and attempt to learn the lessons from humanity’s dark past. The programme will include contributions from Holocaust survivor Henry Wuga, Bosnian genocide survivor Sabina Kadic-Mackenzie, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Christina McKelvie Minister for Equalities and Older People, and students from Graeme High School's, 'Mentoring in Violence Prevention' programme
The Singer of Shanghai, Broughton High School:
The Edinburgh Interfaith Association and Edinburgh Jewish Cultural Centre Helped Scottish High School Students Discover and Appreciate the Shanghai Jewish Refugees History through Appearing in an Original Play.