Address at Holocaust Memorial Day - Westminster Hall, London
27 January 2005

Today we remember the victims of the greatest crime of man against man – and weep for a murdered generation: the young, the old, the innocent, the million and a half children – gassed, burned and turned to ash – because they were different. Ever since, we’ve known that a world that has no space for difference has no space for humanity.

And this year we pay tribute to the survivors. I’ve come to know Ben Helfgott who brought the survivors together. Having lost their families, they became one another’s family, giving each other the strength to continue, the faith to live.
How did they have the courage to carry on, knowing what they knew, seeing what they saw? Just as the eye can be blinded by too much light, so the soul can be broken by too much darkness. Yet theirs were not.

They reaffirmed life, built families and cared for one another. They bore witness to what happened, with no hate or desire for revenge, but simply to remember the victims, so that robbed of their lives they would not be robbed also of their deaths; and to teach us that the road that begins with hate ends, if unopposed, at the gates of hell.

The survivors have borne the weight of memory. Now we must carry it and hand it on to our children. We can’t bring the dead back to life, but we can fight for the sanctity of life. We can’t change the past, but each of us, by challenging prejudice and intolerance, can help to change the future.
Earlier we saw Susan Pollack light a candle, together with Major Williams, at Bergen Belsen. Soon that flame will arrive here in this hall. As it ends its journey we will hear the Jewish memorial prayer Eil Malei Rachamim sung by Cantor Steven Leas and the Central Synagogue Choir. May it light a flame in our hearts so that never again shall the cry of the afflicted go unheard.