Holocaust Memorial Day Bury St Edmunds

Transcript

00:00We live in a world that we don't see

00:06And we're dying and we ought to survive

00:13Hundreds of people from Bury St Edmunds and across West Suffolk gathered at the historic Abbey Gardens today for Holocaust Memorial Day,

00:2080 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

00:24In 1190, there was a massacre of more than 50 Jews in Bury St Edmunds

00:31and subsequently the Jewish population was expelled.

00:34And here am I, a thousand years later, not only the first Labour MP, but the first Jewish MP for Bury St Edmunds.

00:41It feels like history has come full circle.

00:43I think it's important that we remember the Holocaust

00:47and as the numbers of individuals who have living memory of this fade,

00:52we must make sure that the collective memory in humanity is preserved.

01:04I think it's very important that no one ever forgets the Holocaust

01:08and everything that the Jewish people and other minorities went through

01:13because they are beyond comprehension.

01:16And I think so many years have passed and that sometimes people do forget

01:20and we must, as we heard today, we must never ever forget.

01:25The event was a chance to remember those who have died in genocides not only in World War II, but from across the world.

01:35It's difficult to overstate the importance of these gatherings

01:39because unless we remember history and learn from history, then history is repeated.

01:46And the Holocaust, the terrible destruction of Jewish people during the Second World War

01:51was sort of history changing events, which is beyond description.

01:57And to learn as the human family, we need to hold these events to honour people who died,

02:04to remember and then to commit ourselves to challenging injustice and challenging prejudice.

02:10So let us not be silent until our lives are worthy of their memory.

02:15Al domi, al domi lanu, edei yiyu chayeno feruyim lezikharam.