Today marks the 59th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
For the past few years this date has been observed in the United Kingdom as its annual Holocaust Memorial Day. This year Belfast hosts the main commemoration with its theme: "From the Holocaust to Rwanda: Lessons learned; Lessons still to learn". It is a fitting theme, since the slaughter of up to one million people in Rwanda in a few short weeks a mere eight years ago was one of the most appalling acts of genocide in our time.
The scale of the horror of the Holocaust almost defies human comprehension. The systematic, merciless and evil destruction of men, women, children and their communities is a scar on European and world history which may never fully heal. Its consequences still echo, most particularly in Israel's understanding of itself and its need for security. Recent indications that anti-Semitism is being revived throughout the world underline the need for constant vigilance against this form of racist stereotyping and its demonisation of difference. The President, Mrs McAleese, took up the theme in her address to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in Dublin. As she said, "sectarian hatred, racist hatred are awesome when they run amok".
In order to draw the correct lessons from Auschwitz-Birkenau it is necessary to make careful distinctions between different forms of mass violence. Genocide - the use of deliberate measures with the intention of physically destroying a racial, ethnic, religious or similar group - was coined as a word and recognised as the gravest international crime by the United Nations soon after the war.
Looking back on the Holocaust from this perspective one can feel despair that this crime has endured. The countries scarred by genocide include Cambodia, East Timor and Afghanistan. Europeans were helpless to stop the slaughter of Bosnia's Muslims on this continent. Such barbarism blasphemes the Holocaust and all humanity. But it is now more widely recognised as a crime and a form of political behaviour that must be relentlessly confronted and prevented. That allows for hope that its lessons are being learned.
Paul Celan, poet, Jew and Holocaust survivor wrote of those millions who perished in the Shoah as being given "a grave in the air". This anniversary is a day for looking at the sky, praying for the dead and working for the living - in solidarity with its victims and those of other genocides. Difference should be cherished as part of the common humanity affirmed by their memory.