1,600 attend Holocaust service in Liverpool

Jan 27 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

Respectacles

Auschwitz survivors joined religious leaders in Liverpool for a special ceremony to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

More than 1,600 people attended the service at the city's Philarmonic Hall to mark the 1945 liberation of the brutal concentration camp and other atrocities.

Guests at the event included Archbishop of Cantebury Dr Rowan Williams, Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathon Sacks and Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears.

Ex BBC war correspondent and MP Martin Bell and Liverpudlian actor and Harry Potter star Jason Isaacs were also present.

The 1hr30 minute service featured harrowing personal testimonies from survivors and relatives of those killed as well as poetry, music and speeches.

Karen Pollock, of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "It was a poignant ceremony and important to make what has happened in the past relevant to today.

"The fact is that racism still exists, that genocide is taking place in Darfur, and genocide has happened since the Holocaust, for instance in Cambodia and Rwanda.

"This was an opportunity for people to come together and say 'never again' and mean it and act upon it."

Mr Bell said: "The mass graves and memorials at Srebrenica, or the piles of skulls heaped in Cambodian Stupas, are just a few reminders of the millions of people killed in politically orchestrated acts of ethnic cleansing since the Holocaust."