In the latest of our blogs, Fabian Hamilton MP reflects on what the Holocaust means to him.
I have visited the former concentration camps of Auchwitz and Birkenau on a number of occasions, several times in the company of young people born long after the massacre of six million Jews by Hitler’s Nazi regime. Six million! That's the population of eight cities the size of Leeds. The Holocaust exterminated remorselessly the women, children the elderly and infirm. The men were worked literally almost to death before they too were killed and their bodies burned. How was it possible for one group of humans to become obsessed with obliterating their fellow men?
My own family was affected too, relatives whom I could have known and loved never lived long enough to see me born. My visits to the concentration camps are a pilgrimage in memory of my lost family members and a rededication to sustain the fight against intolerance, prejudice and racial hatred that still, sadly, is the backdrop to conflict in some parts of the world. They make me sad and angry, but I will never forget. We must all never forget. Love can overcome hate, but evil can easily regenerate where ignorance and injustice fester. I have pledged myself to keep alive the memory of my lost family. I am certain that they would want me to protect others from ever sharing their fate.