Chipping Barnet MP, Theresa Villiers, joined members Edgware United Synagogue yesterday, to commemorate Yom HaShoa, the day each year when the Jewish community come together to remember the victims of the Holocaust.
Theresa was asked to address the gathering and reflected on the savagery inflicted by the Nazi regime. She said "As fewer and fewer eye-witnesses remain with us, we must redouble our efforts to ensure that the events of the Holocaust are never forgotten. We must always remember the six million people who perished; and all those forced into ghettos and subjected inhumane living conditions, appalling overcrowding, and slave labour."
"Savage beatings, torture, starvation, death marches, humiliation, and murder: no other episode in human history can match the Holocaust in the scale and depth of the evil that sought to harness the technology of the modern world to deliver mass murder on an industrial scale."
"The fact that this could have happened, not in the distant past, but in supposedly civilised 20th century Europe is something I still find incomprehensible, even so many years after I was first told the story of what took place."
Ms Villiers went on to consider more recent events: "It is deeply depressing that the menace of antisemitism is still very much with us." she said.
"It’s shocking and unacceptable that we’ve seen anti-Jewish racism show itself on our streets at recent protests. The events of 7th October once again saw Jewish men, women and children dragged from their homes and beaten, abused, and murdered by a genocidal enemy."
"I visited Israel in January and spoke to some of the families of the people still cruelly held hostage by Hamas. I also met some of the thousands of Israelis who are refugees in their own country, displaced from their homes because the areas closest to Gaza and Lebanon are under such imminent threat of attack. And I sincerely hope that very soon Israel is successful in defeating Hamas and bringing the hostages home."
She concluded: "Memorial events like this one are an important occasion for us to stand together against racism in all its forms, as we recall the extremes of evil to which it can lead, both in the last century, and in this one. Yom HaShoa provides an opportunity for all of us to remember those lives cut short at the hands of the Nazis, to condemn antisemitism, however it manifests itself, and to make the firmest commitment to root it out wherever it is found."
Other guests at the shul's Yom HaShoa service included Cllr Ameet Jogia, Conservative parliamentary candidate for Hendon, Cllr Lachhya Gurung, Cllr Nick Mearing-Smith, and Cllr Shuey Gordon.
Digital imprint: Promoted by Theresa Villiers MP of 163 High Street, Barnet, EN5 5SU.
