John Brady TD marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Sinn Féin spokesperson on Foreign Affairs and Defence, John Brady TD, spoke today in Leinster House of the importance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Teachta Brady said:
“The date of 27 January, the day chosen as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is the anniversary date of the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp by Soviet troops, where over one million victims perished.
“Over six million Jews, along with communists and dissidents, Roma people, disabled persons, and gay people perished during an extermination campaign of unspeakable and savage cruelty, unrivalled in scale, or depths of depravity.
“While the Holocaust casts a great and ceaseless shadow across history; in our remembrance of the victims, in the recollection of the survivors, and in the testimony of the history that has depicted the descent into totalitarianism that preceded the Holocaust, we are served with the gravest of warnings, and an unending impetus to ensure that this can never happen again.
“Succeeding generations have been handed a mantle of responsibility that remains. A responsibility to protect institutions of democracy, the institutions of international accountability, and to develop societies that allow no place for intolerance or hatred of others based on a definition of otherness, whatever form that would take.
“The occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, behoves us all, particularly those of us with political mandates, to rededicate ourselves to the building of societies where democracy flourishes, tolerance is cherished, and hatred and discrimination are banished.”