Cllr Keith Vickers was joined by school children and guests from across North Lincolnshire in the council chamber at the Civic Centre in Ashby Road, Scunthorpe.
The mayor invited all local people to join him at the ceremony and lay a stone in memory of the millions of people who lost their lives in the Holocaust.
Speak Up, Speak Out is the theme for 2012 and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is asking people to think about the rights, responsibility and duty we all have to speak up when we see or hear something, which we believe to be wrong.
St Barnabas’ Church of England Primary School Choir officially opened the ceremony by singing Amazing Grace and ended it with Dona Nobis Pacem (Give us Peace).
Readings were presented by pupils from St Augustine Webster Catholic Primary School, Crosby Primary School, Westcliffe Primary School, Berkeley Junior School, Barton St Peter’s CE Primary School and Castledyke Primary School.
Holocaust Memorial Day brings together people from different faiths and backgrounds to remember the victims of the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
Among those taking part in the ceremony were Father David Rowett, the Mayor’s Chaplain, Leo Solomon MBE, President of the Grimsby Hebrew Congregation, Denise Lawton from the Multi Faith Partnership and Simon Driver, chief executive of North Lincolnshire Council.
Cllr Keith Vickers, Mayor of North Lincolnshire, said:
“This year’s theme challenges us all to learn about what happens when we don’t speak out and what can happen when we don’t use our voice.
“Holocaust Memorial Day takes place on 27 January, the day that the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated in 1945.”
Page last updated: Monday 30 January 2012, 9.45am