PM's Speech on the Holocaust

27 January 2005

The Prime Minister spoke on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.

Parts of this transcript may have been edited

• Find out why some transcripts are edited

Read the Prime Minister's speech in full below:

For many here today, the holocaust survivors, there is no need to state this day's significance. We know you will have many bitter memories, many recollections of personal tragedy. You will recall people you knew, family and friends who died and who, now, across the years come back to you and make your grief fresh and vivid. We pay tribute to you.

I want to address some words to my generation that was born and grew up well after the War ended and to the generations even younger, some of whom may even wonder what it is we commemorate and why.

What significance has it for us? First, it reminds us of suffering beyond imagination, not just because of the miserable and wretched cruelty endured by the holocaust victims, but because of how it was inflicted. It was death as an industry; not just the destruction of human life; but of human essence done with a barbarity we can scarcely contemplate. This was no natural disaster. No act of God. But an act of deliberate, calculated evil such as humanity never in its existence knew before, and let us pray, never knows again.

But it happened, inflicted by human beings on other human beings and in the lifetime of my father.

Second, it lets us, with humility, remember some of the extraordinary acts of courage by Jewish people and others during the holocaust. Some we know and have read about. But how many others will we never know, the thousands of acts of kindness, sacrifice, fellowship, exemplary bravery that kept the spirit of human progress alive even in the uttermost darkness and helps even now to give us the faith to go forward.

Thirdly, today teaches us a lesson of remembrance.

We must never forget the holocaust victims.

We must never dishonor their memory by allowing the ugly poison of racial prejudice and hatred to hold sway again.

We must pledge ourselves to confront such prejudice wherever it seeks to disfigure our community and we remember above all that the holocaust did not start with a concentration camp. It started with a brick through the shop window of a Jewish business, the desecration of a Synagogue, the shout of racist abuse on the street.

We recall today what humanity at its worst can do.

And then, in keeping the memory of the holocaust in our minds and hearts, we allow the dead to live again, to teach us, urging us to work for a world free from such prejudice and hatred, for a future shared by all.