As services are held across the UK on Sunday to mark Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), the event will have particular resonance for 86-year-old, Harry Grenville.
The BBC report how 69 years after their deaths, Greenville finally received confirmation that his parents died in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
A photograph of his father's suitcase taken in Poland's Auschwitz Museum and clearly bearing his name was sent to him last week.
The National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire
Grenville said: "It was rather an affecting sort of blow - the first evidence I have ever had of that my father, and therefore my mother and grandmother too, actually arrived in Auschwitz."
Grenville's family were amongst 11m people systematically killed during the Holocaust. Candle-lit ceremonies will take place in London and at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
National Holocaust Memorial Day has been held on the 27th January every year since 2001. The date is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops in 1945.
Auschwitz
The day is also in honour of those who have died in other genocides such as Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT), said: "Whole communities were completely destroyed during the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, which is why we are asking people to honour Holocaust Memorial Day 2013 by building bridges within their communities," reports ITV.
Lib-Dem MP, David Ward, was forced to apologise this week for comments he made ahead of HMD, accusing Jews in Israel of "inflicting atrocities on Palestinians".
His party were quick to condem the remarks but others have argued that he is in fact right, if a little careless in his choice of words, and is highlighting a contentious issue.
The HMDT is hosting a number of events on Sunday, details of which can be found here.