North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood reflected on the plight of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi Persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, at today’s Holocaust Memorial Day event in Wrexham.
Mr Isherwood was invited by AVOW (Association of Voluntary Organisations Wrexham) to speak at the event on Holocaust Memorial Day 2020, which marks 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp in Poland as well as the 25th anniversary of the Genocide in Bosnia.
He spoke at length about the atrocities of the Holocaust and welcomed events being held to commemorate all those that were affected.
He said:
“During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted and killed other groups, including children, because of their perceived racial and biological inferiority: Roma and Sinti Gypsies, Disabled Germans, LGBT people and some of the Slavic peoples (especially Poles and Russians).
“No single wartime document created by Nazi officials spells out how many people were killed and calculating the numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is a difficult task.
“However, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the estimated total number of people murdered during the Holocaust stands at 17 million: 6 million Jews and 11 million others.
“An estimated 500,000 European Roma and Sinti were murdered during the Holocaust - victims of racist persecution by the Nazis, but this genocide is still largely unknown.
“It is estimated that close to 250,000 disabled people were murdered under the Nazi regime.”
He added: “This year will also Mark the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen Concentration camps by British Forces on the 15 April 1945, and this year’s Memorial Day is also special due to two anniversaries related to the memory: The 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Stockholm Declaration, under which the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research was established, known today as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance; and the 15th anniversary of the adoption of 27 January as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations General Assembly.
“Both events symbolically took place on 27 January, on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz”.
Mr Isherwood referred to the Holocaust Memorial Event he recently attended in the Senedd, and his signing of the Book of Commitment, provided by the Holocaust Educational Trust, which gave Assembly Members the opportunity to reflect on and sign a 7 point commitment to remember and educate future generations about the atrocities committed during the Second World.
He said: “As I wrote “The past informs the future. If we do not learn the lessons of the past, we will be doomed to repeat them. Let us never forget”.
