Holocaust Memorial Day

 

Holocaust Memorial Day, Monday 27th January

Genocide is the deliberate political determination to destroy a racial, ethnic, religious, or national people.

January 27^th annually marks Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD). On that day in 1945, eighty years ago, Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the largest camp of its kind. More than 7,000 prisoners were released. During the five years of its operation, more than one million men, women and children were murdered, ninety per cent of them Jewish. Victims also included Poles, Romani, Soviet prisoners of war, political prisoners, gay people, and those who were physically or mentally disabled.

From the HMD website: Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of the horror of industrialised murder, and what can happen when hatred is left unchecked.

 Holocaust Memorial Day also commemorates the millions of people worldwide who have been killed in genocides.

Remember the victims of the genocides of more than two million in Cambodia, under Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, 1975-1979, and around one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, in Rwanda, in 1994.

In July 1995, eight thousand Muslim men, and boys over the age of twelve, were murdered in Srebrenica by Bosnian Serbs. This was the largest mass murder in Europe since World War Two.

Darfur, Sudan, was the setting in 2003-2005 for the genocide of two hundred thousand black Africans. War continues in Sudan.

Discrimination and persecution, bigotry and hatred continue to this day, in every nation, in every walk of life. From casual generalisations and crude jokes to organised marches and demonstrations, we are only ever a short step away from the breakdown of a civilised, caring society.