Holocaust Memorial Day: teaching your students about genocide – in pictures

The gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous of all the Nazi camps. Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated on 27 January 1945, the day Soviet troops liberated the camp. More than 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz – more than 90% of those people were Jewish. Photograph: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

Arrival and selection at the ramp at Auschwitz. Between 1941 and 1945 the Nazis attempted to systematically murder all of Europe’s Jews.  Photograph: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

Shoes of inmates at Auschwitz. By the end of the Holocaust, 6 million Jewish people had been killed in ghettos, mass shootings, concentration and extermination camps. Photograph: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

Holocaust survivor, Lily Ebert: "Auschwitz was really a factory for killing and humans beings were used as fuel. I survived and I promised myself I would tell the world what happened." Photograph: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

The former headquarters of the Rwandan army where the government and military planned the genocide and trained militias. Photograph: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

The clothes of people killed during the genocide in Rwanda. In 1995, over a period of 100 days, approximately 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Extremist Hutu leaders used radio and word of mouth to encourage killing squads to carry out the genocide by hand. Photograph: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

This year marks 20 years since the genocide in Rwanda. Appolinaire, a survivor, says: "I didn’t take anything because I had nothing, but I could be killed. I didn't know where I was going, but I had to go. It was a very bad journey of my life." Photograph: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

During the Genocide in Cambodia (1975 -1979), the Khmer Rouge emptied towns and cities, forcing men, women and children into the countryside to work as labourers on collective farms. Deaths from execution, disease, exhaustion and starvation have been estimated at more than 2 million. Many people were murdered at the Tuol Sleng Prison. Photograph: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust