World needs a reminder of where hate can lead, if the words 'never again' are to truely mean anything...

NO other place on earth has come so much to symbolise the evils of unchecked oppression, enslavement and mass murder as Auschwitz-Birkenau.

- GILES SHELDRICK

For 80 years the Nazi concentration and extermination camp has been a byword for a regime that committed mass murder on an unprecedented industrial scale.

Today it stands as a stark warning of what can happen if tyranny goes unchallenged, and the further atrocities that could be wreaked if the world fails to honour the solemn promise: "Never again."

The genocide of European Jews during the Second World War was a stain on humanity the like of which the world hoped would never be witnessed again.

Over a million were murdered at the extermination camp in occupied Poland as part of the Nazis' "final solution".

After it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army during the Vistula-Oder Offensive on January 27, 1945, and as the Second World War finally ended, Jews hoped the scourge of antisemitism had been conquered forever.

Enormity

But hostility towards and prejudice against Jews is the oldest form of hatred and sadly it is on the rise once again.

In the eight decades since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, antisemitism has simmered below the surface, erupting in the atrocities in Israel on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists mercilessly slaughtered 1,200 men, women and children.

Since that onslaught, the world has witnessed frequent and appallingly open attacks on Jewish communities in cities hitherto known for tolerance and peace, notably London, one of the most diverse and free on earth.

The figures speak for themselves.

In the first six months of last year the Community Security Trust, a Jewish charity, recorded 1,978 antisemitic hate incidents more than double the figure for the same period in the previous year.

The rise was attributed squarely to the fallout from the massacres in Israel and subsequent retaliation by the Jewish state.