The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, will today be joining the Queen, the Prime Minister, and the Chief Rabbi at a ceremony to be held at Westminster Hall this afternoon to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. The ceremony will also be attended by 600 British Holocaust survivors.

Reflecting on the event, the Cardinal said today:
“On this 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps and the end of the Second World War we should examine our consciences, stop and listen to the survivors of Nazi persecution and mass murder and learn from their witness to the indelible God-given dignity of human beings even in the face of the most appalling evil.

The Jewish people remain a force of conscience in the world today. Their memory of the Shoah is a warning, a witness and a silent cry to all humanity.

We say “six million” now without catching our breath. But if it was happening now, to us, it is as if 100,000 murders had been committed every year since 1945. We say it could never happen again. But genocide, as the appalling case of Rwanda showed us, remains a feature of our modern world.

Pope John Paul II has appealed to Catholics to renew their awareness of the Jewish roots of their faith. He has asked them to remember that Jesus was a descendant of David; that Mary and the Apostles belonged to the Jewish people; that the Church is nourished by its roots in Judaism; and that the Jews are our brothers and sisters, in a sense ‘our elder brothers and sisters’.

We are one human family and today’s commemoration involves all of us.”