The first National Holocaust Memorial Day is designed to commemorate genocides around the world. But not everyone is convinced it is a good idea, writes JULIAN HILLS

Events in Barnet and across the country are about to focus on lessons learnt from the Nazi Holocaust as well as genocides in countries such as Bosnia, Rwanda and Armenia.

The idea is to examine the roots of prejudice and racism still prevalent today. Noble though that is, some dissenting voices have been raised.

Judith Hassan, the director of the Holocaust Survivors Centre (HSC), in Church Road, Hendon, feels the focus of Sunday's Holocaust Memorial Day is misplaced.

"I think it would be better from the survivors' point of view if it had been called the national genocide day," she said. "The survivors feel very strongly that the Holocaust was a unique event in terms of genocide, and I would support that.

"The way the industrialised murder was organised makes it very different from many other genocides that have been experienced. It is just paying lip service to what was a unique event. It is not making a significant statement about the Nazi Holocaust.

"I don't want to denigrate it but I do have concerns about how it is being arranged."

Hendon MP Andrew Dismore, who took a leading role in establishing the day, disagrees.

He said there was consultation on the naming of the event before anything was arranged. "The decision was taken so we did not downgrade the Holocaust because it was the definitive genocide of the last century. In that context, it was important to make sure it was the focus of the day.

"The day is an opportunity for leaders of society to get together to tackle anti-Semitism and racism."

At the forefront of that fight is British Holocaust survivor Leon Greenman.

Leon, 90, spent three years in five Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald and the scars of losing his wife and two-year-old child to the Holocaust are still painfully clear.

"We were like rats; like monkeys," he said. "They used us. They didn't expect any of us to survive. In the camps, they messed about with us until we were nothing.

"One of the men left the barracks but they dragged him and put him on a table not far from me, and beat him up. I have never seen so much blood from his face and head. The officer was crying out 'You will all get the same if you don't listen to me'."

Leon gives regular talks at the Jewish Museum in East Finchley. Running alongside the Holocaust Memorial Day is a powerful exhibition at the East End Road museum telling Leon's personal and bitter story of his life spent fighting fascism and racism.

Schools from across the capital have been invited to attend Holocaust education programmes at the museum, and Leon is willing to talk and answer questions about his experiences, and agrees that the Holocaust is a unique event extending beyond the Jewish community.

"In civil wars, people are getting killed, but in the Holocaust, people, innocent people from babies to old people were taken out of their homes because they were Jewish, gypsies or they opposed Hitler. Whole families were taken miles away from Poland and killing them by gassing.

"They took away my wife and child, and my sister. They killed 60 to 70 members of my family in Holland.

"They haven't made a law for Holocaust murders, otherwise there would be so many people in prison. I am talking about what is happening, and if they are not careful it might happen again, and it might be their families put in a camp.

"If you don't remember this, it is going to happen again. I am the same as before. This war is always with me. I want a peaceful world."

Fellow survivor Eva Schloss, from Edgware, will be telling her story across the country with the Anne Frank Educational Trust before returning to the event at Middlesex University in The Burroughs, Hendon, on Monday.

She is anxious to learn lessons from experiences of genocide throughout history including recent events in Bosnia, Rwanda and Armenia.

"If countries commit these atrocities, then you will have asylum seekers," she said. "The strong people have the courage to go away and start a new life in a different situation. These people will bring lots of interesting life to the new country.

"These people should be valued, but some people still have not accepted them. This has to stop. We have to live together."