The business of remembering and the politics of forgetting is nowhere more controversial than in the area of the Holocaust. In the last year alone, a number of studies on Holocaust commemoration have stirred up bitter debates over who should be commemorated and how. US writer Norman Finkelstein has gone so far as to say that "the noblest gesture for those who perished is to preserve their memory, learn from their suffering and let them, finally, rest in peace".

On Saturday, Britain will mark its first National Holocaust Memorial Day. According to a Home Office spokesperson, it is a project very close to the heart of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. On the continent of Europe, Sweden and Germany long ago set aside the same day, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, both to mark their respect for the dead and to act as a bulwark against the resurgence of such genocidal hatreds. However, the fact that, in the last decade of the last century, the soil of Europe once again ran red with blood because of "ethnic cleansing" must surely raise certain questions about the efficacy of commemoration.

Holocaust survivors, many of them ignored for decades, must look with some bewilderment at the plethora of remembering now taking place. Belfast-based Helen Lewis, whose book A Time to Dance chronicles her Holocaust experience, remembers how difficult it was to even try to bring up the subject. "Here, after the war, there was total ignorance and not only that, there was a certain reluctance in people to hear about it, and so of course I never talked about it, as I felt it was an imposition. However, this has changed completely since my book came out in 1992. Here in Northern Ireland certainly, there is a willingness to learn and even a certain embarrassment about past ignorance."

In Britain, it was a parliamentary question by MP Andrew Dismor in 1999 that prompted the current drive for Holocaust commemoration there. A consultation process took place from June 1999-2000 with Holocaust educators, racial equality groups, local communities and survivors. Over 1,000 consultation papers were received, and the suggestions therein have shaped the agenda for the day. However, controversy surrounds the official ceremony at Westminster Hall and associated education programmes. Ireland boasts very few Holocaust survivors because so few Jewish refugees were allowed to enter the country either during the war or in the post-war period.

In 1995, the then Taoiseach, John Bruton, apologised officially for the behaviour of the Irish government of the day for implementing such a restrictive policy. But can we as a society take it one step further and institute a national memorial day, and what form could it take? Sabina Shorts, one of the handful of refugees to enter wartime Ireland, says: "I'm not in favour of it. Just having one day is not enough. It goes in one ear and out the other. I have lived here and it's a wonderful country but the one thing that makes me sad is they have not introduced anything about the Holocaust into the education system. On the Continent and in Germany it is one of the most important subjects. And I have never understood why it is not regarded like that here."

Dr Joe Briscoe, son of the first Jewish TD, Robert Briscoe, who lost various family members in the Holocaust, sees no advantage in having a memorial day without linking it to contemporary racism. He is also somewhat sceptical of the fact that, in Britain, the initiative is being directed from the Home Office.

"Over the last five to 10 years, the covert racism in Britain has become increasingly overt. Despite the well-worn cliche, `never again', from our political and religious leaders, the plain truth is that racism is on the increase at an alarming rate. All the above is true of Ireland as well as the UK. In fact, the increase in the amount of racism in Ireland is astounding and should be of serious concern to our leaders. Yes, there should be a National Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK and also here in Ireland. Not just a memorial day for the six million Jews and Gypsies who perished in the Holocaust, but also to show what rabid racism can lead to."

Dr Ronit Lentin of the Ethnic and Racial Studies programme in Trinity College - whose recent book, Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah, examines the relationship between Israel and the Holocaust - believes that the issue of commemoration is a highly complex one, intimately linked to the construction of "official memory" in society. "In order to commemorate the Shoah, it is not sufficient to set aside a special day. It is important to give a lot of thought to how we might commemorate it. The tendency, in most Shoah commemorations, has been to focus the attention on the worst atrocities - thus Auschwitz has become the epitome of Nazi horror and people tend to forget that many Jews, but also millions of non-Jews, were also incarcerated and killed by the Nazi regime. Nor was Auschwitz - or the extermination camp - the only manifestation of the Holocaust.

"People were shot in forests near quiet villages, they were starved and forced to march for days in freezing weathers. If Ireland was to set aside a Holocaust commemoration day, it is vital that such a day is set in a specific Irish context, taking on board the closing of Ireland's borders to Jewish refugees before and during the Holocaust. But more importantly - as a daughter of a family of survivors, and an anti-racist activist, I believe that it is important that a Holocaust commemoration day does not focus on commemorating only what happened to `the Jews', or even also to `the Roma and Sinti' during the war, but is used as a focus to struggle against racism in contemporary Ireland."

For Susi Diamond the whole notion of a memorial day provokes mixed feelings. Susi and her brother Terry were part of a group of seven children brought to Ireland from Belsen by Dr Robert Collis and his wife, Hann, in the immediate postwar period. They were two of just a few lucky children allowed into Ireland in the postwar period, as Department of Justice officials were staunchly opposed to letting in substantial numbers. "Ireland just turned a blind eye and hid behind neutrality. So how can they make such a day meaningful? They kept turning everyone, including children, away. John Bruton publicly apologised and said it was a disgrace, but really, that was too little, too late. It would be lovely to have a day, but unless there's something to it, unless it's followed up with education, it would mean nothing."