The number of schools commemorating the Holocaust has more than halved since the October 7 attacks on Israel.
More than 2,000 secondary schools around the UK had signed up to events commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day in 2023, which takes place on January 27, according to data from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Until that year, those taking part had increased annually since 2019.
But since the terrorist attacks by Hamas, the number of participating schools fell to fewer than 1,200 in 2024 and 854 in 2025 — a reduction of nearly 60 per cent. There are about 4,200
Commenting on the figures, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi, said he feared for the country’s education system as teachers were following “the path of least resistance” by choosing to not mark Holocaust Memorial Day in the face of opposition from parents and pupils.
Writing in The Sunday Times, he said: “Holocaust Memorial Day is not a platform for political debate. It is not an endorsement of any government, perspective or conflict. It is an act of human memory.”
More than 1,200 people were massacred on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, prompting a war in Gaza.
“I fear for what will happen this year,” Mirvis wrote. “For if we cannot teach our children to remember the past with integrity and resolve, then we must ask ourselves what kind of future they will inherit.”
Westminster Abbey’s glass chandeliers were lit in purple to mark the last Holocaust Memorial Day
ALAMY
Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said it was important for schools to mark the occasion and encouraged teachers to organise lessons, classroom activities and assemblies.
The trust was set up by the government in 2005 to promote and support Holocaust Memorial Day, when the six million Jews who were murdered under Nazi persecution are remembered across the UK. Each year the theme changes and the trust updates the resources it sends to schools. The theme for 2026 is “bridging generations”. After Holocaust Memorial Day, the trust captures data from multiple sources, including events hosted by partner organisations, to count how many schools hosted events.
The Holocaust Education Trust, a separate charity founded in 1988, said teachers were “anxious” when teaching about Jewish persecution and worried about “a backlash from parents”.
Karen Pollock, the charity’s chief executive, said many students “arrive in the classroom with views shaped by social media trends rather than evidence”, while Holocaust survivors “are being asked to navigate questions about a contemporary conflict just because they are Jewish”.
The Anne Frank Trust said three schools across England and Wales postponed their Holocaust education programmes in 2024 after the October 7 terrorist attack, due to “local community tensions”. None are known to have cancelled this year.
Dan Green, the charity’s chief executive, said that marking Holocaust Memorial Day has never been more vital than “during this time of rising antisemitism, Holocaust denial, revisionism and distortion”.
Steve Reed, the communities secretary, said: “Holocaust Memorial Day gives us an anchor to all come together and remember the atrocity of the Holocaust, to commit to remembering and preserving the legacy of survivors It’s deeply saddening to see the number of schools marking Holocaust Memorial Day decline at a time where we need it most, with the number of survivors sadly dwindling and when we face an appalling rise in antisemitism.”
Heckles and ‘intifada’ calls
The decline in participating schools comes after Bristol Brunel Academy suspended a visit from a Jewish MP after a campaign by pro-Palestine activists.
Damien Egan, the Labour MP for Bristol North East, had been invited to the school in September, but the visit was cancelled after the local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign intervened. It was reported to have been helped by local members of the National Education Union (NEU).
The Cabot Learning Federation, which runs the school, denied this was due to concerns about Egan’s involvement with the Labour Friends of Israel parliamentary group, and insisted it was simply delayed due to safeguarding issues.
Ofsted, the schools watchdog, will investigate the school after inspectors concluded on Thursday that an inquiry was warranted.
Lord Mann of Holbeck Moor, Labour’s antisemitism adviser, called for the NEU to also face an investigation for its reported involvement in the cancellation of Egan’s visit.
In 2024 Peter Block, a 76-year-old Jewish retired teacher from northwest London, was booed off the stage at the union’s annual conference for challenging a motion that blamed Israel for the war in Gaza.
Daniel Kebede, the union’s general secretary, was himself accused of antisemitism when, two years before taking on the role, he addressed a Palestine solidarity rally and urged crowds to “globalise the intifada”, seen by some as an incitement to violence against Jewish people.
Daniel Kebede
JAMES MANNING/PA
It has now emerged that the NEU arranged antisemitism training for its governing body.
In a leaked email exchange from last autumn between a Jewish teacher and Kebede, the general secretary said: “I want to counter the rise in antisemitism … Among other actions, I have organised training for all national executive members around antisemitism.”
In the email exchange, the former secondary school teacher, who said it had become “untenable” to remain a member of the union, said the NEU “has allowed antisemitism to take institutional form”.
The teacher wrote: “The treatment of Jewish members who dare to speak up has been shameful. At the 2024 NEU conference, a retired Jewish teacher was heckled, cut off, and humiliated when he warned about antisemitism in the union. Meanwhile, union funds have been diverted into organising and promoting pro-Palestinian demonstrations.”
Kebede said in response: “I fully recognise that antisemitism is a real and growing threat and that this creates fear, harassment and trauma for Jewish teachers and students. I do not condone the way Peter Block was heckled when he spoke to NEU Conference.”
A spokesman for the NEU said it took “all forms of racism seriously”, and confirmed it had organised a “training and educational programme for national executive members with the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism as part of wider antiracism training for our national executive.”
On the declining participation in Holocaust Memorial Day events, the NEU spokesman said: “It is more important than ever that we commemorate the Holocaust, remember the victims and learn the lessons that the Holocaust must teach us.”