Parliament this evening joined other UN and EU member-states to commemorate the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in the hope that people will remember the horror stories of the concentration camps and prevent genocide.

Foreign Minister George Vella said the Holocaust was a stain on European history from which lessons had to be learnt.  Man could easily become an animal, forget his humanity and destroy others as if they were nothing. Apartheid, segregation, ethnic cleansing in Syria and the Balkan states and in Central Africa, were still happening.

Opposition deputy leader Mario de Marco said that they were commemorating man’s worst tragedy – the worst descent into depraved behaviour, with the murder of six million Jews, two million gypsies, homosexuals and other people.  

However, history had also shown that there were people who will risk their lives to stand up and be counted. 

Sometimes, Dr de Marco said, even in this small country people forget that they wereone race; we build walls between political parties, walls between north and south, walls because of sexuality. He appealed for the removal of all that diminished man’s dignity to ensure the Holocaust would never happen again.