Today (January 27) is International Holocaust Remembrance Day

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Today (January 27) is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which coincides with the anniversary of the liberation ofAuschwitz, where more than one million people were killed by the Nazis.
"From the enlarged black-and-white photos hanging on the walls, the eyes of a young child stare back at me. As he climbs out of the train carriage his face shows a mixture of confusion and anxiety," wrote Katie Giles, a Telegraph Travel reader, of her visit in 2013. "Within each building are more pictures, faces, personal belongings and with each one comes stories of terror, torture and murder. The temperature seems to drop as we approach the death wall and gas chambers. Both are void of tourists and the signs request we remain silent as a mark of respect for the thousands who were killed here. They’re not necessary; there is nothing to say."
Here are 16 more haunting memorials to the victims of the Holocaust...

 

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Budapest
On the banks of the Danube in Budapest lies this memorial, by artist Gyula Pauer. It honours Jewish residents of the city who were killed by a fascist militia at the end of the Second World War. They were ordered to remove footwear before being shot and thrown into the icy waters.

 

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Outside Budapest's Dohány Street Synagogue there is another memorial by the sculptor Imre Varga depicting a weeping willow

 

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Miami
This sombre memorial is found in Miami Beach - it shows an outstretched arm reaching for the skies as hundreds of human figures cling to it and to each other. It was described as a “brutal intrusion on the cityscape” when it was unveiled. Holocaust survivors said that was the point.

 

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Berlin
Among the best known monuments to the victims of the Holocaust, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe covers 4.7 acres and features 2,711 concrete "stelae" of varying height. It opened in 2005 and was visited by 3.5 million people in its first year. It has been praised for "conveying the scope of the Holocaust's horrors without stooping to sentimentality - showing how abstraction can be the most powerful tool for conveying the complexities of human emotion."

 

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Vienna
Unveiled in October 2000, this imposing memorial depicts rows of books, all of which have their spines facing inwards so they cannot be read - a nod to Judaism as a "religion of the book" and the cultural loss due to the Holocaust.
Its brutalist design is at odds with the Baroque glories of Vienna. "This monument shouldn't be beautiful, it must hurt," said Simon Wiesenthal, the man behind the project.

 

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Jerusalem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Its poignant Hall of Names features hundreds of photographs of those who died.

 

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There's also an original cattle car used by the Nazis to transport Jews to concentration camps - it perches on the edge of a clifftop.

 

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Minsk
This monument marks the spot where 5,000 prisoners of the Minsk ghetto were shot dead by Nazi forces. On an obelisk a message reads: "The bright memory of five times the light of thousands of Jews who perished at the hands of sworn enemies of humanity - German-fascist monsters". A bronze sculpture was added in 2000.

 

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Jasenovac, Croatia
A concentration camp stood here from 1941 until 1945 with as many as 100,000 killed there. It reopened as a memorial museum in 2006, topped with a sculpture called Stone Flower.

 

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Amsterdam
Few memorials are as harrowing as Anne Frank House, where the doomed diarist and her family hid from the Nazis for two years. "The attic rooms, reached through a door behind a hinged bookcase, are bare of furniture yet almost unbearably poignant, with magazine pictures pasted on the walls by Anne still in situ," says Rodney Bolt, Telegraph Travel's Amsterdam expert.

 

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Belzec, Poland
Up to 500,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis at Belzec - with as few as seven recorded survivors. A suitably bleak memorial was built in 2004 - visitors walk along a concrete pathway that cuts through a vast field of crushed stone.

 

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Tel Aviv
This memorial by Israeli artist Yigal Tumarkin is found at the southern end of Rabin Square.

 

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Boston
The New England Holocaust Memorial consists of six glass towers, which represent the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis, six major extermination camps (Majdanek, Chełmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Bełżec, and Auschwitz-Birkenau), the six branches of a menorah candle, and the six years that the Holocaust took place (1939-45).

 

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Treblinka, Poland
Between 700,000 and 900,000 were killed at this camp in Poland. Visitors today can see an imposing stone memorial, preserved cattle cars and symbolic concrete blocks that mark the path of the former railway line.

 

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San Francisco
Made by George Segal using white painted bronze, this Holocaust Memorial is found in Legion of Honor Park in San Francisco.

 

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Paris
There are several memorials to the Holocaust in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, including this one, dedicated to the victims of Buchenwald.
The Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, meanwhile, remembers the 200,000 people deported from Vichy France to Nazi concentration camps - it is located on Île de la Cité, behind Notre Dame.

 

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Today UK Parliament

The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron):I know the whole House will want to join me in marking Holocaust Memorial Day. It is right that our whole country should stand together to remember the darkest hour of humanity.
Last year, on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I said we would build a striking national memorial in London to show the importance Britain places on preserving the memory of the holocaust. Today, I can tell the House that this memorial will be built in Victoria Tower Gardens. It will stand beside Parliament as a permanent statement of our values as a nation, and it will be something for our children to visit for generations to come. I am grateful to all those who have made this possible, and who have given this work the cross-party status that it so profoundly deserves.



Peter Aldous:
I echo the Prime Minister’s sentiments regarding Holocaust Memorial Day. We must never forget.

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab):
On behalf of the Opposition, I welcome the remarks the Prime Minister made about Holocaust Memorial Day. It is the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. We have to remember the deepest, darkest days of inhumanity that happened then and the genocides that have sadly happened since. We must educate another generation to avoid those for all time.


Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP):
I begin by associating the Scottish National party with the comments of the Prime Minister in relation to Holocaust Memorial Day, and commend Governments across the United Kingdom for supporting the Holocaust Educational Trust for the important work it does.


The Prime Minister:
First of all, I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman says about the Holocaust Educational Trust. I remember as a new constituency MP meeting people from the trust and seeing the incredible work they do in my constituency. They work extremely hard around the clock but this day is particularly important for them. I urge colleagues who have not visited Auschwitz to do so: it is something they will never forget, no matter what they have read, films they have seen or books they have interrogated. There is nothing like seeing for yourself what happened in the darkest hour for humanity.

 

[ScottL]

Thanks SB

Never Forget

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Thanks SB

Never Forget

Amen.