On this day, January 27, in 1945, the Red Army arrived at Auschwitz. Its horrors shocked even those battle-hardened troops, many of them veterans of Stalingrad. Auschwitz was the darkest moment of the 20th century, perhaps of world history.

It was the epitome of the Nazi Holocaust, which involved the state-organised murder of six million Jews, over one million Roma, and mass atrocities towards a further seven million civilians.

The Holocaust evokes for most people the ultimate in inhumanity, hence the outrage and revulsion towards Holocaust distorters, deniers and modern-day fascists. They insult the memory of survivors and other eyewitnesses who are the spokespersons of those millions without voice, who collectively tell us a story of systematic and ongoing brutality. The Holocaust must be remembered.

Firstly, the Holocaust demonstrates how genocide........

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