Earlier this month, my wife and I were in Block 27 of Auschwitz searching for members of her family in the Book of Names. It was harrowing.
We turned page after page after page just to find the first letter of a name. It gave me an overwhelming sense of the sheer scale of this industrialised murder.
And every one of those names, like the names we were looking for – was an individual person. Someone’s mother, father, brother, sister brutally murdered, simply because they were Jewish.
Last week I met Renee Salt and Arek Hersh who somehow survived but whose loved ones were among those victims. I was humbled by their courage to speak of being in that place. I felt waves of revulsion at the depravity they described, at the cynicism.
People told to bring their belongings like the piles of pots and pans I saw myself. The commandant living next door bringing up his family, the normalisation of murder, like it was just another day’s work.
In Auschwitz, I saw photographs of Nazi guards standing with Jewish prisoners staring at the camera – completely indifferent – and in one case, even smiling. It showed more powerfully than ever how the Holocaust was a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary individuals utterly consumed by the hatred of difference.
And that is the hatred we stand against today, and it is a collective endeavour for all of us to defeat it.
We start by remembering the six million Jewish victims and by defending the truth against anyone who would deny it. So we will have a National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre to speak this truth for eternity.
But as we remember, we must also act. Because we say never again, but where was never again in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, or the acts of genocide against Yazidi.
Today, we have to make those words mean more. So we will make Holocaust education a truly national endeavour.
We will ensure all schools teach it and seek to give every young person the opportunity to hear a recorded survivor testimony. Because by learning from survivors like Renee and Arek we can develop that empathy for others and that appreciation of our common humanity, which is the ultimate way to defeat the hatred of difference.
As I left Block 27, I saw the words of Primo Levi. It happened, it can happen again: that is the warning of the Holocaust to all of us.
And it’s why it is a duty for all of us to make “never again” finally mean what it says: Never again.
