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| Says Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths: “Today marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Red Army. The scenes which greeted those soldiers have rightly been described as a page from hell. In fact, Auschwitz turned out to be one of a major network of camps and ghettoes designed to bring about the genocide of the Jewish people. Six million Jews died in the Holocaust alongside gays, Roma and Sinti, trade unionists, Poles, disabled people and Soviet prisoners of war. They had been dehumanised and treated in a way and on a scale not seen since the previous genocide of African enslavement. At the end of the Second World War, the world was clear that mass murder lay at the very core of fascist policy. But as time has moved on, and as the survivors become fewer, personal testimony and truth have become contested by historical revisionism, holocaust denial and the shameful theory of ‘equivalence’ between the Nazi and other fascist regimes and their collaborators on one side, and the Soviet Union and Communist anti-fascist partisans on the other. This situation has been made much worse by the acceptance of the resolution, ‘On the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe’ by the EU parliament. To their shame, Labour MEPs voted for this legitimisation of fascist revisionism. It is precisely to contest such distortions that the Communist Party associates itself with the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, ‘Be the Light in the Darkness’. This theme points to the depths of fascist intolerance, bigotry and violence, but calls on all citizens to stand up for what is right. In particular, the challenge in this year, is how best to educate and mobilise future generations – who will never have the opportunity to meet a survivor of fascist barbarism – yet need to understand the truth of what happened during the Holocaust, so we can ensure that fascism is never again tolerated. This year the Communist Party’s Anti-Racism Anti-Fascism Advisory Commission will begin a campaign to expose online racism, intolerance and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Already, our party is in the forefront of the campaign against the ‘Double Genocide’ movement, warning the labour movement in Britain of the dangers of fascism camouflaged as ‘Freedom from Communism’. Each Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember and rededicate ourselves to the struggle against fascist barbarism, in the knowledge that we must never lower our vigilance against anti -semitism and all other forms of racism.” |