Holocaust Memorial Day 2026 - Bridging Generations: Generational Voices and Silences

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day theme encourages us to think about the transmission of memory of the Holocaust and the role played by intergenerational dialogue in carrying this important legacy.

Guest Speaker Deanna Van der Velde’s parents fled Poland and Germany in 1938 and came to settle on Tyneside. Many members of her parents’ families perished in the Holocaust.

Deanna taught French in schools across Newcastle for many years and has worked in interfaith dialogue in Newcastle and the wider region. She has been Director of Newcastle Council of Faiths and Chair of Newcastle SACRE. Deanna is also Vice President of St Oswald’s Hospice and works closely with the community engagement team at Northumbria Police. She is also an outreach volunteer for her synagogue, the United Hebrew Congregation of Newcastle, and is a passionate advocate of Holocaust Education in the region.

Additional talks will be delivered by Northumbria PhD researchers Diane Asensio, Hannah Buckley and Sarah Wren.

Refreshments will be served before the lecture begins.

About Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) 2026

The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) 2026, 'Bridging Generations', is a call-to-action. A reminder that the responsibility of remembrance doesn't end with the survivors - it lives on through their children, their grandchildren and through all of us. This theme encourages us all to engage actively with the past - to listen, to learn and to carry those lessons forward. By doing so, we build a bridge between memory and action, between history and hope for the future.

As the years pass, we’re growing more distant in time from the Holocaust and from the other, more recent genocides that are commemorated on HMD. That distance brings a risk – memory fades and the sharp reality of what happened becomes blurred, abstract or even questioned.

Bridging Generations highlights the crucial role of the next generation in preserving the memory of the Holocaust and carrying it forward. It highlights the power of intergenerational dialogue – of listening to those who came before us and of sharing those stories with those who come after. In doing so, we don’t just preserve memory – we connect it to the present.

Register below for this free event