January 27 is Holocaust Memorial Day and in the run up to this a multi faith service took place at the Catford & Bromley Synagogue last Saturday followed by a wonderful theatrical performance at the Broadway Theatre by many talented young people.  I was privileged to attend both events.

The theme of this year’s event has been “the legacy of hope”  - it is extraordinary how so many survivors of the holocaust, far from being consumed by hatred, offer us hope for the future by their words and their actions.

They demonstrate the strength and power of the human spirit – when faced with evil they respond not in kind but with love and thus give us all of hope that we can make a better world.

Denise Affonco survived the Cambodian Genoicide but suffered greatly and saw members of here family die in front of her. Nevertheless she kept her faith and says “I am a catholic and I still believe in the goodness of man. Those who did those awful things to us were only a small section of humanity.”

Dawid Gruber did not survive the Nazi holocaust dieing at just 19 in the Warsaw Ghetto.  But he left us a message that was buried and then recovered after the war. He said, “May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened……May history attest for us.”  When Dawid left that message he could not know if anyone would ever read it ..but he hoped they would.

Hope is the most precious thing we can possess – once we lose hope all is lost.  We must remember the victims of all holocausts and we must make sure that the hope they gave us in not wasted – they paid a terrible price to keep hope alive and we have a duty to sustain it.