Letter: Never let us forget the Holocaust

Huw Spanner
Monday 30 January 1995 00:02 GMT
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From Mr Huw Spanner Sir: No one could disagree with the conclusion of your leading article that we must, at all costs, remember the Holocaust.

But it seems to me sadly ironic that, in common with almost the whole of the media, you have already forgotten the fact that the Nazis' policy of industrialised extermination was not only applied to Jews. They also set out to eliminate from Europe the gypsies, black people, homosexuals and mentally disabled people. The numbers they killed were smaller, but still, I believe, huge and appalling.

I wonder why these other victims have been forgotten. Is it simply a question of numbers - seven figures is more impressive than six figures. Or is it that these others have never found the voice which Jewish people (quite rightly) have had to remind theworld of their suffering? Or is there some less excusable reason?

It is not only anti-Semitism which persists across mainland Europe and still finds its echoes here. If we allow to be forgotten the evils done to any group by the Nazis and their many cheerful collaborators, we may be giving implicit encouragement to their imitators today.

Yours faithfully, HUW SPANNER Harrow, Middlesex,

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