A showing of the award-winning film Final Account made by Swindonian Luke Holland at the school he attended, Commonweal School, will be the final part of Holocaust Memorial Day in Swindon on Friday.

The day which marks remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust – the attempt to kill all Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany during the Second World War - as well as other genocides, will see three events taking place in Swindon.

At noon at the Cenotaph in Regents Circus, Mayor of Swindon Councillor Abdul Amin and the Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire Sarah Rose Troughton will lay wreaths and take part in a 20-minute ceremony including readings.

At 12.30pm, at the Friends Meeting House, Eastcott Hill, there will be a gathering for readings and reflection. Light lunchtime refreshments, including sandwiches and hot drinks will be provided.

This gathering is expected to last an hour, with readings and presentations by members of many of Swindon's faith groups and community groups.

At 6.30pm in the Auditorium in the Sixth Form Centre at The Commonweal School, The Mall, there will be a free showing of the award-winning documentary film Final Account made by the late Luke Holland, a former pupil of The Commonweal.

The film looks closely at the involvement of ‘ordinary people’ in the mid-European mid-twentieth century genocide. It comprises interviews with the last living generation of Hitler's Third Reich.

Matt Holland, once of the organisers of Swindon’s memorial day said: “The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day this year is ordinary people, which chiefly acknowledges two things.

“First, that genocide is facilitated by ordinary people, who may turn a blind eye, believe propaganda, and join murderous regimes.

“Second, that those who are persecuted, oppressed, and murdered in genocide are not persecuted because of crimes they’ve committed – but simply because they are ordinary people who belong to a particular group, class, or race of which others disapprove. Ordinary people still suffer such persecution today.”

January 27 was selected at Holocaust Memorial Day when it was inaugurated in 2006 as it marks the day when the Auschwitz concentration camps in Poland were liberated in 1945.

Anyone wishing to speak or read at the gathering at Friends Meeting House is asked to contact Matt Holland at 01793 771080 or matt@lowershawfarm.co.uk beforehand, or speak to him on the day.