Buckinghamshire communities invited to light candles for Holocaust Memorial Day

This date is marked as Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, the date on which Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the worst German Nazi concentration and extermination camps, was liberated in 1945. The year, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of this act.

His Royal Highness King Charles attended a commemorative event in Poland to mark this anniversary. The King issued a vital warning to the world as he visited, he said: "In a world that remains full of turmoil and strife and has witnessed the emergence of antisemitism, there can be no more important message... The act of remembering the evil of the past remains. a vital task and in so doing, we inform our present and shape our future."

The Secretary General of the United Nations in 2014, Ban Ki-moon, addressing the General Assembly also gave a warning of the perils of anti-Semitism and hatred of any kind, "The United Nations was founded to prevent any such horror from happening again. Yet tragedies from Cambodia to Rwanda to Srebrenica show that the poison of genocide still flows"

The U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, in his remarks to the gathering, made a critical point - that the world, despite the cry of “Never Again!” after the mass murder of six million people - has often failed to stop such genocides from continuing.

What makes a human being, who is "created noble" to "carry forward an ever advancing civilisation", behave in this way? What makes him, despite the knowledge that the inflict of suffering of any kind on a fellow human being is despicable, commit these acts?

Humanity needs to pause and reflect on past historical events and devise ways to bring humanity to live up to its noble station; a station where we start to recognise the oneness of humanity, and that this planet is our global home; a station where, we not only tolerate differences, but also celebrate our diversity as the flowers of one garden!

Abdul-Baha, early in the 20th century, when he could sense the spectre of war looming in Europe and all around the world, gave the following advice:

"When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love."

Few decades earlier, Baha'u'llah, in the 19th century, wrote the following words predicting the plight of humanity and praying that they are aided to "accomplish that which beseemeth their station":

"How long will humanity persist in its waywardness? How long will injustice continue? How long is chaos and confusion to reign amongst men? How long will discord agitate the face of society?… The winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divideth and afflicteth the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appeareth to be lamentably defective. I beseech God, exalted be His glory, that He may graciously awaken the peoples of the earth, may grant that the end of their conduct may be profitable unto them, and aid them to accomplish that which beseemeth their station."

Let us pray that such events, barbaric in nature, against minorities of any kind, whether religious, racial or gender, are eradicated from every corner of the earth, and that this generation be the generation to have changed this planet into a global paradise!

Dr. Burhan Hayati, Member of Aylesbury Vale Baha'i Community