Always Remember, Never Forget

On January 27 1945, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps from Nazi control. Estimates of the numbers of those that dies there are placed at around 1.1 million people, with victims including Jews, Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners-of-war.

The day and date has become one to remember, and one to provoke remembrance. International Holocaust Remembrance Day was declared in 2005 by the UN General Assembly with the aim of getting people across the world to remember those that died in such horrific circumstances and to teach and promote the important lessons of tolerance, courage and respect in order to ensure that such protracted episodes of violence and cruelty will never happen again.

History cannot be changed, but the future can be improved. This year, the Holocaust Memorial Day’s campaign urges all of us to Speak Up, Speak Out against discrimination and hatred. I would encourage everyone to visit their website and to take a moment to remember the victims of the Holocaust and all other subsequent genocides. They were and are victims of irrational hatred and ignorance, and these wrongs must never be allowed to take hold again. Please visit the Speak Up website (www.speakupnow.org.uk/) to learn more about the lessons we can learn from the tragedies of the past to ensure that they will not occur in the future.

On this day, there is an essential need for reflection and remembrance. I can think of no greater aide to remembrance that John Williams’ soundtrack to Schindler’s List and, in particular, the piece entitled ‘Remembrances’. The violin part, expertly performed by Itzhak Perlman, conveys the range of emotions we remember today: the despair and angst of those who left this world, the pain of those who lost loved ones, the mixture of joy and guilt of those that survived, and perhaps most importantly, the hope that their memories and experiences will stop such cruelty from ever happening again.