60 years on...

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
    and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemoeller

Funeral procession at Auscwitz
1945, Auschwitz After Liberation:
Burying the Dead

"TAKE SIDES. Silence helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

"Sometimes we must interfere.
When human lives are endangered,
when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."

Eli Wiesel

During the Second World War, Hitler, his commanders and collaborators across Europe were taken by hatred or crippled by human weakness. They systematically segregated, transported and murdered MILLIONS of people.

The Holocaust was the systematic, industrialised annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi regime during World War 2. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. The European Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust. But Jews were not the only group singled out for persecution by Hitler’s Nazi regime. As many as one-half million Gypsies, at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons, and more than three million Soviet prisoners-of-war also fell victim to Nazi genocide. Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats, Communists, partisans, trade unionists, Polish intelligentsia and other undesirables were also victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the Nazis.

The holocaust was not the end of the systematic murder of people, for race or political belief. In Rwanda and Bosnia, in Indonesia, Cambodia and Iran even RIGHT NOW in the Sudan, there has been and is the same pattern of humiliation, segregation, destruction of life and massive displacement of entire people.

As time passes the victims of the Holocaust will no longer be alive to act as living testimonies to the horrors endured. We need to do more than to simply remember. We need to ensure that it never happens again.