Professor Rainer Schulze has published an article on leading website The Conversation explaining the importance of remembering victims of genocide across the world as Holocaust Memorial Week begins at the University of Essex.

Throughout the week there will be talks, theatre, exhibitions and events dedicated to the theme 'Forms of Remembering: Lessons Learned?'.

Today (Monday 27 January) to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, there are events organised by students and student societies taking place throughout the day and a candlelight procession through the Colchester Campus starting at 5pm at the Lakeside Theatre.

• Read Professor Schulze on The Conversation

In his article for The Conversation, Professor Schulze, from the Department of History, said: “Just saying that we don’t want something like the Holocaust to happen again has not really worked: the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Darfur are terrible reminders that we do not seem to be able, or willing, to learn from history. But what is worse is that what made the Holocaust, and other genocides, possible is still virulent all around us: preconceptions and prejudice, and the rejection or the fear of someone just because he or she is different, is not ‘one of us’.”

He concluded: "If the Holocaust tells us anything loud and clear, it tells us that if the human rights of one group are violated, no group can feel safe."

Members of the public, students and staff are invited to take part in the candlelight procession and are being invited to make lanterns at the Lakeside Theatre before today's event.

Other events this week include:

• Exhibition - Lee Miller’s War, Art Exchange until 16 February
• Tuesday 28 January: Talk - The Harry Lubasz Memorial Lecture: Translating Primo Levi's If This Is A Man, 7pm, Firstsite, Lewis Gardens, High Street, Colchester
• Wednesday 29 January: Talk - Lee Miller's Indelible Images, 5.30pm, Ivor Crewe Lecture Theatre (seminar room)
• Wednesday 29 January: Event - Dora Love Prize 2014, 7pm, Lakeside Theatre
• Thursday 30 January: Event - Human Library, 12noon to 4pm, Ivor Crewe Lecture Hall foyer
• Thursday 30 January: Theatre - The Tin Ring, 7pm, Lakeside Theatre, University of Essex
• Friday 31 January: Event - Human Library, 12noon to 4pm, Ivor Crewe Lecture Hall foyer
• Friday 31 January: Theatre - East 15 at the Lakeside, 7pm, Lakeside Theatre

Free film screenings

• Wednesday 29 January - No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka (2013)
• Thursday 30 January - Ruins: Chronicle of an HIV witch-hunt (2013)
• Friday 31 January - I am Gay and Muslim (2013)

• Full details of Holocaust Memorial Week