Someone might ask why a British Jordanian Muslim, of Palestinian origin, signed a book this week to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. I have always been horrified by the Holocaust, but this year two things in particular made me ‘speak up and speak out’; the first was my eldest daughter Iman, who was studying Anne Frank at school, I found the story of this brave young girl, not much older than my own daughter, profoundly moving. The second was over the Christmas holidays when I read Max Hasting’s remarkable book on the Second World War ‘All Hell Let Loose’. Who would have thought that what started with the occupation of Poland would lead to the cruel deaths of so many women, children and men in the concentration camps.
The brutal and disconcerting lesson of history is man’s capacity for outrageous cruelty and the callous destruction of the lives of fellow human beings. Sadly the book of human savagery is a heavy volume with many chapters, but the Holocaust is perhaps the most shocking chapter of all. The sheer obliteration of the Jewish people on such a massive scale and in such barbaric fashion, each life lost, the destruction of families and friendships, and the loss to the world of great scientists and talent, seem unimaginable.
If we are to live in a world where no people are despised, demonised, persecuted or oppressed because of the accident of their birth, the colour of their skin, or the god they worship, then we must never forget that malign political cultures can so readily sweep up otherwise decent people into hatred and oppression.
And yet in recent years we have witnessed genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, religious extremism turn into the modern evil of terrorism, and too many people still living in fear and under occupation. Condemnation of these acts is a universal value and all free thinking, enlightened people should join to unreservedly and enthusiastically condemn the unholy trinity of genocide, terrorism and occupation, and that is why I added my name to the millions of people around the world remembering the Holocaust.
Dr Mohammed Abdel-Haq is Chairman of the CMEC Advisory Board.
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