The Swedish Prime Minister, Mr Goran Persson, opening a conference on the Holocaust in Stockholm yesterday, said people must learn from Nazi crimes and keep anti-democratic forces in check.
The three-day conference, which has attracted more than 700 delegates from 46 countries, is taking place as the far-right seems on the verge of joining a coalition government in Austria, while in Sweden three neo-Nazis are on trial charged with spreading Nazi propaganda.
"Anti-democratic forces continue to gain support. The danger lies in our failure to learn from history, our failure to see the connection," Mr Persson said.
Mr Persson was joined by the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, and some 20 other leaders at the conference on Holocaust education, research and remembrance.
Earlier, Jewish and Israeli leaders as well as Mr Persson expressed concern at political developments in Austria. Israel and the Jewish community, represented by the World Jewish Congress, have made it clear relations with Austria will be strained if far-right leader, Mr Jorg Haider, enters government.
"The rise to power of an extreme right-wing party in Austria is a highly disturbing signal coming from Austria, but it also shows signs of raising its head in other countries," Mr Barak told reporters after talks with Mr Persson early yesterday.
"I believe that for every Jew in the world it is a highly disturbing signal . . . it touches every one of us."
Mr Haider is best known internationally for remarks playing down Nazi crimes, although he has apologised as the possibility of coming to power has grown.
The conference is the third global event on Holocaust issues since a London conference on Nazi gold in 1997 and a Washington conference about looted art in 1998.
The UK is to join other European countries in marking a Holocaust memorial day, Mr Blair confirmed yesterday. The Prime Minister said January 27th, 2001, would be the first such day, chosen to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1944.
"I hope in years to come the Holocaust memorial day will be a day when we reflect and remember and give our commitment and pledge that the terrible and evil deeds done in our world should never be repeated," said Mr Blair.
Meanwhile yesterday, the historian David Irving told the High Court in London, that eye-witness evidence of the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz was "totally demolished" because there were no holes in the roof through which to insert poison.
Mr Irving (62), author of Hitler's War, who is seeking libel damages for being called a "Holocaust denier", said his theory "blows holes in the whole gas chambers story".
He said a number of "revisionist" researchers had entered the ruins of crematorium two at Auschwitz, in which Holocaust historians say 500,000 died, and photographed the collapsed underside of the roof - but found no holes.
"I do not accept that the Nazis in the last frantic days of the camp, when they were in a blue funk, would have gone around with buckets of cement filling the holes that they were going to dynamite."
Mr Irving made the comments during his cross-examination of Profe Robert van Pelt, who has said that there was a "massive amount of evidence" of the camp's use for mass extermination.
Mr Irving is suing Penguin Publishers over Prof Lipstadt's 1994 book Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory.