Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day I signed the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Book of Commitment, reaffirming my support for their work and in honour of those who were murdered.
Holocaust Memorial Day is marked each year on 27th January; which is the anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
This is also a time to thank those survivors who continue to work relentlessly to help educate young people today.
At Prime Minister’s Questions this week, Theresa May said that Holocaust Memorial Day is a reminder to challenge and condemn prejudice and hatred wherever it is found.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘Torn From Home’; encouraging people to think about how the enforced loss of a safe place to call ‘home’ is part of the trauma facing anyone experiencing persecution and genocide.
This week, a bust of Captain Frank Foley, who worked for MI6 and was posted to Berlin, was unveiled at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. In the 1930s, he used his position to issue visas for thousands of European Jews seeking to flee Nazi Germany. Visa rules at the time were strict, and Frank applied what could be described as imaginative discretion given the severity of the threat faced.
It falls to every single person in public life to condemn anti-Semitism, and work to end such hatred.
Henry Smith MP
Crawley Constituency
House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA
01293 934554/020 7219 7043
henry.smith.mp@parliament.uk
www.henrysmith.info