Mouthpiece: We must stand in way of evil

On January 27, people around Britain will remember the millions of victims of Nazism by participating in Holocaust Memorial Day. This year will mark the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

Many survivors continue to do vital work in bravely speaking of their experiences at public events to bring home the day-to-day reality of Nazi terror. Nevertheless, as the number of survivors is gradually reduced, we should be aware of the responsibility that we all have to keep the memory of these terrible events alive.

Six million Jews died in the Holocaust after being subjected to a growing campaign of terror conducted by the Nazis from 1933 onwards.

Despite the concrete evidence of this, far-right groups continue to deny that the Holocaust took place. I was pleased to see that the general election saw the British public reject the policies of racial hatred but there have been countries in recent decades where ethnic conflict and slaughter has taken place.

Since the 1990s, for instance, we have seen people in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda turn on their neighbours simply because they belonged to a different religious or ethnic group. The philosopher Edmund Burke wrote that: "all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" and in the case of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda much more could and should have been done at an earlier stage by the international community to prevent the slaughter.

The Holocaust remains unique in the scale of the systematic slaughter that took place but it has a great deal to teach us today. Each victim was an individual who had friends and neighbours. We owe it to them to fight against prejudice both in our own communities and wherever in the world ethnic hatred festers and turns to violence.

Mark Lazarowicz is MP for Edinburgh North and Leith