A JOINT letter from the leaders of Britain’s main faith groups for Holocaust Memorial Day cited the persecution of thousands of Rohinghya in Myanmar as evidence that the world “cannot be complacent” about the risks of another Holocaust.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, and Imam Qari Asim said that 2019 also marked the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and the 40th anniversary of the end of the genocide in Cambodia.
“Despite the world saying ‘never again’ after the Holocaust, genocide and mass killings have taken place again and again.”
Their open letter also spoke of division and hostility on the streets of the UK, though it did not mention the Brexit divide.
“Antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred, racism, gender-based violence, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice [are] still with us on the streets of Britain,” it said.
A poll carried out for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust suggested that one in 20 UK adults did not believe that the Holocaust took place, and one in 12 thinks its scale was exaggerated.
The Trust’s chief executive, Olivia Marks-Woldman, said: “Such widespread ignorance, and even denial, is shocking.
Writing in The Times, Canon Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, said that Christians needed to say sorry for “1000 years of antisemitism” and accept that “without the Jews Christians know next to nothing about Jesus and God.”