麻豆社

Good Morning
Today the 27th of January is Holocaust Memorial Day, an international day of solemn remembrance as together we remember the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust, and the millions more murdered under Nazi persecution. The day also commemorates and learns from where prejudice and persecution led to genocide more recently, in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

As a sign of our respect and solidarity with all the victims and survivors of these horrendous acts of terror we are encouraged today to light a candle to place in a window as night falls; to symbolise our prayer and fragile hope for a better, kinder world even in the face of such darkness.

This year鈥檚 theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is Bridging the Generations, which recognises how the passage of time can sometimes dull our collective memory of such atrocities. Especially as the years pass and eye witness survivors are no longer with us, whose personal stories of trauma, once told, have such power to convince all who hear them to strive for peace.

I know the power of such stories myself, having visited Cambodia in 2009, whilst working for an international development charity. Meeting people who have experienced such trauma is harrowing and deeply affecting. Their quiet witness as they spoke of family and friends murdered in the Khmer Rouge regime, broke my heart. Their words and faces still haunt me today.

So the spirit of Holocaust Memorial Day is right to remind us to never forget and I, for one, pray, we never do. Amen.