Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auchwitz.

January 27th has been designated Holocaust Memorial day when we remember all the millions of human beings who were murdered in the waves of persecution by Hitler's Nazi regime and their allies.

This was not the first genocide or, sadly the last. But it is important that we remember the victims of genocide because the better we remember it, the fewer people are likely to die through such hideous insanity in the future.

Those of us who have not experienced the elimination of our entire communities, of all our families and friends cannot fully appreciate how awful this was for each of the millions of victims. And the sheer scale of the number of victims of Hitler's regime is so vast that our minds cannot begin to comprehend the amount of suffering which those numbers represent. But we can and should remember those numbers because we do have the capacity to understand that they represent a truly enormous evil.

The Nazis and their fascist allies are estimated to have directly or effectively murdered

* About 5.93 million Jews
* 2-3 million Russian prisoners of war
* 1.8 to 2.0 million non-Jewish Polish civilians
* About 270,000 disabled people
* 90,000 to 220,000 Roma or Gypsies
* 80,000 to 200,000 Freemasons
* 20,000 to 25,000 Slovenes
* 5,000 to 15,000 gay people
* 2,500 to 5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses
* Thousands of the Nazi and Fascist regimes' political opponents.

Many, perhaps even most people reading this will have disagreed with or disapproved of some of the actions or beliefs of at least one group of people on the very, very long list of those who the Nazis decided were their enemies.

So long as it goes no further than honest disagreement, that is nothing to be ashamed of. Hitler also built Autobahns, and I've rarely heard even the most hard-line green or NIMBY put that forward as an argument against a proposal for a new bypass or motorway.

But it should be a warning to us all of where, when disagreement becomes anger or fear and then hate, such anger and fear can lead.

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