Holocaust Memorial Day
Today, Holocaust Memorial Day 2019, is the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
It is a day when we remember the victims of the genocides of history, from the Shoah in which the Nazis and their allies murdered six million Jews and millions of other people who fell into one of the classes of people they refused to accept as human, to all the other instances where the attempt has been made to use mass murder to eliminate a problem.
Under the theme "Torn from home," we reflect today on what happens when individuals, families and communities are driven out of, or wrenched from their homes, because of persecution or the threat of genocide, alongside the continuing difficulties survivors face as they try to find and build new homes when the genocide is over.
Today we also mark the 25th anniversary of the Genocide in Rwanda, which began in April 1994 and the 40th anniversary of the end of the Genocide in Cambodia.
I make no apology for repeating the final lines of Laurence Rees's book "Auschwitz, the Nazis and the 'Final Solution" which I posted here a year ago.
"Soon the last survivor and the last perpetrator from Auschwitz will have joined those who were murdered at the camp. There will be no one on this earth left alive who has personal experience of the place. And when that happens there is a danger that this history will merge into the distant past and become just one terrible event amongst many.
There have been horrific atrocities before, from Richard the Lionheart's massacre of the Muslims of Acre during the Crusades, to Genghis Khan's genocide in Persia. Maybe future generations will see Auschwitz the same way - as just another bad thing that happened in the past, before living memory.
But that should not be allowed to happen.
We must judge behaviour by the context of the times. And judged by the context of mid-twentieth century, sophisticated European culture, Auschwitz and the Nazis' 'Final Solution' represent the lowest act in all history.
By their crime the Nazis brought into the world an awareness of what educated, technologically advanced human beings can do, as long as they possess a cold heart. Once allowed into the world, knowledge of what they did must not be unlearnt. It lies there - ugly, inert, waiting to be rediscovered by each new generation. A warning for us, and for those who will come after."
It is a day when we remember the victims of the genocides of history, from the Shoah in which the Nazis and their allies murdered six million Jews and millions of other people who fell into one of the classes of people they refused to accept as human, to all the other instances where the attempt has been made to use mass murder to eliminate a problem.
Under the theme "Torn from home," we reflect today on what happens when individuals, families and communities are driven out of, or wrenched from their homes, because of persecution or the threat of genocide, alongside the continuing difficulties survivors face as they try to find and build new homes when the genocide is over.
Today we also mark the 25th anniversary of the Genocide in Rwanda, which began in April 1994 and the 40th anniversary of the end of the Genocide in Cambodia.
I make no apology for repeating the final lines of Laurence Rees's book "Auschwitz, the Nazis and the 'Final Solution" which I posted here a year ago.
"Soon the last survivor and the last perpetrator from Auschwitz will have joined those who were murdered at the camp. There will be no one on this earth left alive who has personal experience of the place. And when that happens there is a danger that this history will merge into the distant past and become just one terrible event amongst many.
There have been horrific atrocities before, from Richard the Lionheart's massacre of the Muslims of Acre during the Crusades, to Genghis Khan's genocide in Persia. Maybe future generations will see Auschwitz the same way - as just another bad thing that happened in the past, before living memory.
But that should not be allowed to happen.
We must judge behaviour by the context of the times. And judged by the context of mid-twentieth century, sophisticated European culture, Auschwitz and the Nazis' 'Final Solution' represent the lowest act in all history.
By their crime the Nazis brought into the world an awareness of what educated, technologically advanced human beings can do, as long as they possess a cold heart. Once allowed into the world, knowledge of what they did must not be unlearnt. It lies there - ugly, inert, waiting to be rediscovered by each new generation. A warning for us, and for those who will come after."
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