Archbishop of Westminster Sends Holocaust Message of Remembrance

|PIC1|The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has sent a message of remembrance to the organisers of Holocaust Memorial Day.

As the Memorial Day falls on Friday – which has a number of implications for certain faiths – national events will be taking place up and down the country to remember the victims of the Holocaust on Jan. 26th ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on 27th January. This year’s theme is: ‘One Person Can Make a Difference’.

In his message, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said: “History's greatest evil remains barely graspable by the human mind. But I glimpsed something of it at a visit once to Auschwitz, where a room contained suitcases stamped with the initials of those who were taken to the gas chamber.

"Their suitcases, and their names, were stripped from them. The Jews and others whom the Nazis scapegoated had to be dehumanised in order to be slaughtered. The warning is clear: wherever dehumanisation takes hold, terrible evil is sure to follow.

"That is why the message of the Shoah remains one of the defence of the God-given intrinsic dignity of all human beings, of which the right to life is the primordial. This is a right which comes with birth; it is not a concession of the state or the law. It cannot be given and taken away. It is the indelible mark of God in us, and its denial is a sacrilege.

|QUOTE|"The Catholic Church solemnly teaches that Jesus was a descendant of David; that Mary and the Apostles belonged to the Jewish people; that the Church is nourished by its roots in Judaism; and that the Jews are our 'elder brothers and sisters' in faith.

"The Catholic people of the world stand with Jews against anti-semitism and holocaust denial, and in defence of the God-given dignity of all human beings."

"We can never forget."

The Rt. Hon. Rhodri Morgan AM, First Minister for Wales will host the national commemoration event in the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, on Thursday 26 January 2006.|TOP|

Last week Morgan and Cardiff Council Leader Rodney Berman signed a Book of Commitment to Holocaust Memorial Day at a special ceremony in Cardiff.
In signing the book the two leaders made a pledge to ensure that the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and of all genocide, lives on, and that future generations continue to be educated on the causes and consequences of the Holocaust.

They also acknowledged mankind’s shared responsibility in fighting against genocide, anti- Semitism, racism xenophobia and all other types of discrimination.