I am watching and listening, on my computer, to the speeches live from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. I grew up with a close friend whose mother had been an inmate at the infamous Auschwitz. A beautiful, kind and elegant woman who was a wonderful wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother. The way she lived her life is testament to the ability of a human being to rise above unspeakable horror and cruelty. In honour of her memory and the memory of all who perished in the Holocaust may we all oppose racism and inhumanity in every part of our world.

We thank Great Britain for giving the children of the Kindertransport a home here and thank those non Jewish families who took them into their houses including the family of David Attenborough who fostered two German Jewish girls, Irene and Helga and treated them as their own children.

Whoever destroys a single life is considered to have destroyed the whole world and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world.