THE HEAD OF Holocaust Education Ireland has backed its decision to invite President Michael D. Higgins to deliver a keynote speech on Holocaust Memorial Day after some criticism of the President’s previous remarks.

National Holocaust Memorial Day is marked each year at the end of January to remember the six million Jewish people who were murdered during the Holocaust by Nazi Germany.

Holocaust Education Ireland offered an invitation to President Higgins in September to speak at the the 2025 commemoration, which he accepted.

However, some members of the Jewish community in Ireland criticised the decision due to the President’s previous comments about Gaza.

Yesterday, Oliver Sears, founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland told Newstalk FM that the President had “lost our confidence” and that they do not feel he is “empathetic”.

“Last year, during the ceremony, he lectured us on Gaza. Our hearts are breaking too. We don’t need, on our Holocaust Memorial Day, to be lectured on Gaza. It’s just not the moment. We want one hour a year where we can sit with our own private grief,” Sears said.

Holocaust Education Ireland has stood by its decision to invite the President, thanking him and other politicians for their participation in previous years.

In a statement, its chairperson Professor Thomas O’Dowd said that the commemoration event “cherishes the memory of all of the victims of the Holocaust and is attended by people from all walks of Irish life”.

“2025 will mark 80 years since the end of the Second World War when the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed. The ceremony takes the form of readings, survivors’ recollections, the Scroll of Names, candle lighting, and music,” Professor O’Dowd said.

“The keynote address is delivered by the President or the Taoiseach each year or occasionally, by the Minister for Justice. President Michael D. Higgins was issued an invitation in September 2024 to give the keynote address at the Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration in January 2025, which he accepted,” he said.

“Ireland is a signatory of the Stockholm Declaration 2000, committing to remembrance and education about the Holocaust. The United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January as Holocaust Remembrance Day in November 2005.

“The commemoration cherishes the memory of all of the people who perished in the Holocaust and recalls the millions of innocent Jewish men, women and children and all of the other victims, who were persecuted and murdered because of their ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, political affiliations or their religious beliefs. It is a solemn and dignified occasion.

“Holocaust Education Ireland is issuing this statement to clarify the purpose of Holocaust Memorial Day. We are grateful for the support and participation of the President and of a number of Taoisigh and government ministers on behalf of the state over the years.”

In a statement to The Journal, a spokesperson for the President said: “The President has received an invitation to this year’s National Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration. The President has accepted this invitation and is working on his speech.”

In his 2024 speech, President Higgins discussed the atrocities of the Holocaust and its perpetrators and thanked survivors for sharing their testimonies.

“The personal recollections of Survivors of the Holocaust, deeply painful as they must be for those who make them, are so important, constituting as they do a powerful giving of witness, an invaluable authenticity as context to any words any of us may use, reminding us, as they do, of the millions of individual lives which together make up the collective experience of the Shoah – families murdered, families torn from each other, deaths suffered, sometimes witnessed, and so many others in solitary conditions,” he said during his keynote speech last year.

“On Holocaust Memorial Day, now 79 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, with our knowledge that the Nazis, and the allies who supported them, ran over 44,000 camps, ghettos, and other sites of detention, persecution, forced labour, and murder during the Holocaust, it is a time to remember the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, together with the millions more murdered under the deadly attrition of Nazi persecution,” he said.

In one section of his speech, he spoke about Hamas’ attack on Israel and Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

“As we come together today to remember the victims of the Holocaust, it is important that we recognise the very significant trauma of recent events, following the appalling atrocities which took place on 7th October perpetuated by Hamas,” the President said in his 2024 speech. “The violence of that action, the killing, abuse and abduction of hostages from their families, of other young people attending a music festival, was a horrific and morally reprehensible act.”

“If we believe that life itself is what is paramount, that all lives matter, then we must acknowledge too that, since 7th October, too many lives, and particularly those of women and children, have been lost, that over half a million people as we speak are at the edge of famine,” he said

“In order for 2024 to see the beginning of the process of recovery for all those who have been so devastated by the events of recent months, including those who have lost their lives in both Israel and Gaza, it is incumbent on all nations to redouble their efforts for an end to the loss of life, an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and to commence the task of achieving such a lasting and meaningful peace as can provide security for Israel, while at the same time realising the rights of the Palestinian people.”