Archbishop calls on churches to remember Holocaust Memorial Day

THE Archbishop of Wales is urging churches to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

The Most Reverend John Davies will attend the National Ceremony in Cardiff City Hall and give the blessing at the end of event. He said: “The Holocaust is certainly one of the most vile and shameful examples from the catalogue of events which disfigure the history of the human race. Commemorating both it and its victims, whilst also recognising the terrifying perversity of those human minds which enabled such an atrocity to be devised and implemented is something which I wholeheartedly support.

“The persecution of any individual or group of human beings because of their race, religion or ethnic origin can never be justified. Remembering the Nazi’s attempt, by means of genocide, to mercilessly extinguish the very existence of such a group of people from certain parts of Europe is to recall events that must continue to be brought to mind in all their detail and in all their horror. The commemoration is not only appropriate, it is essential, because those events must never be forgotten.”

The day, on January 27, remembers, not only the Holocaust of the Jewish people at the time of World War Two, but subsequent Genocides from the more recent past: Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

This year’s theme is The Power of Words.