HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY EVENT AT McDONALD ROAD LIBRARY

Tomorrow is Holocaust Memorial Day, marking specifically the 69th anniversary of the Soviets' liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a notorious Nazi concentration and death camp.

The commemoration is intended more generally to focus minds on the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution between 1933 and 1945 of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and other minority groups. As well as honouring the dead, the idea is that we should learn from the past and not repeat such mistakes in our present.

A special event to mark the day was held at Broughton High School last week, and on Monday evening, from 6–8pm, the poet Don Paterson will speak on the theme of 'Journeys' in a free event at McDonald Road Library. 

Mark Lazarowicz MP will sign a Book of Remembrance at the House of Commons tomorrow. He says, 'It’s hard for us to fully understand the terror and cruelty [Holocaust victims] suffered, living as we do in a democracy where the law is there to protect not persecute.

'Yet there are people in many parts of the world today who do fear for their lives in a very similar way to those who suffered then because of their religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. 

'We owe it to the victims of the Holocaust to remember their suffering and to combat prejudice and intolerance in the world today.'