Holocaust Memorial Day: Royal Remembrance

The king and queen consort lit candles on Holocaust Remembrance Day in remembrance of the six million Jews deliberately murdered by the Nazis in German-occupied Europe during World War II.

Holocaust commemoration of the victims every year on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The day is also used to mourn the millions more people who lost their lives under the Nazi persecution of other groups.

And millions of other lives that were lost in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur are also commemorated.

Candles were lit across the UK at 4pm and a memorial was held at Piccadilly Circus in London.

Thirty works of art by people affected by the Holocaust, genocide or identity persecution were projected on a digital billboard.

Photos taken by photographer Rankin of genocide survivors were also on display. And a crowd, including survivors, gathered to pay their respects.

Landmarks such as the London Eye, Perth Bridge and Titanic Belfast were lit up purple later in the day.

Read more: Survivor describes horror of watching Nazi death squad kill her mother

At Buckingham Palace, Charles and Camilla met Dr Martin Stern who was taken to Nazi concentration camps during World War II as a young boy.

After the candle-lighting ceremony, the King said: “I hope this will be a way of trying to remember all those poor people who had to endure such horrors for so many years – and who still do.”

Dr Stern, who was born to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, survived the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands and the Theresienstadt ghetto in northern Bohemia (now Czech Republic ) after being taken away by officers when he was five years old.

Her father died in a separate camp in 1945 and her mother died of an infection during childbirth in 1942.

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UK Marks Holocaust Memorial Day

Speaking about the lighting of the candles, he said: “It is extremely important. The perpetrators would like us to just forget about it, move on so that they quietly continue to commit more of their horrific crimes.

“To light a candle publicly is a marker that prevents tyrants and criminal states from quietly perpetuating their mass crimes.”

Alert to the “plague” of anti-Semitism

Dr Stern warned of a “plague” of anti-Semitism in the UK.

“There is a scourge, and it is very sinister, because without centuries of anti-Semitism, Nazism and the Holocaust would not have happened,” he said.

“And the danger is that we are leading to a similar catastrophe.”

Charles and Camilla also met Amouna Adam, from the persecuted Fur tribe, who survived the genocide in Darfur, western Sudan, as well as representatives of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

They discussed ongoing work to ensure lessons learned during the genocides are not forgotten.

Laura Marks, chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: “What the King has been able to offer us, to share with us, is his interest both in the Holocaust but also in other genocides and the work what he does.”

This article is originally published on news-24.fr