I was pleased to be invited to the Anne Frank Lunch in central London and heard the Home Secretary give a key speech there. The lunch was to mark Holocaust Memorial Day which was on the 27th January, the date marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp. The liberation of this camp and many others around Central and Eastern Europe would show the World the unparalleled evil of the Nazi German regime and show the world what the Allied forces had been fighting for throughout the Second World War.
I also signed the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Book of Commitment, in doing so pledging my commitment to Holocaust Memorial Day and honouring those who were murdered during the Holocaust as well as paying tribute to the extraordinary Holocaust survivors who work tirelessly to educate young people.
The work of the Holocaust Education Trust is vital as we are approaching a stage where more and more of the survivors of the horrors which took place are no longer with us to relay their accounts from living memory. This puts great emphasis on current generations to maintain those memories and to educate new generations about the evil which took place. More importantly with that education, we must ensure that such a menace on the progress of mankind is never repeated again.