As Ireland yesterday marked its sixth annual Holocaust memorial day across the country with the main ceremony in the Mansion House Dublin, Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan said the commemoration had nothing to do with Israel or the Middle East conflict.
In a sombre ceremony a moving tribute was paid to the "six million of the Jewish faith who perished in the Holocaust as well as millions of others, annihilated because of their ethnicity, their disability, their sexual orientation, their religious convictions or their political beliefs", Mr Lenihan told the audience of 500.
Before the ceremony he pointed out that Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern had twice raised the question of the need to bring supplies to stricken Palestinians in the Gaza strip.
At the commemoration he said, "there was huge focus and concentration on one distinct ethnic group, the Jewish people." He added that the "inclusion of all victim groups is fundamental to the commemoration in Ireland and their being remembered here has set a precedent for other countries to follow".
Politicians from both sides of the Border joined survivors of the Holocaust, members of the diplomatic community, the main religious faiths and visitors from all over Ireland, Britain and Europe.
Lord mayor Cllr Paddy Bourke said the presence of the Holocaust survivors living in Ireland "reminds us of our determination to make sure that the victims are never forgotten, that the survivors are never abandoned and that we never allow an event such as the Holocaust to happen again".
One survivor, Tomi Reichental, who for 50 years could not speak about his experience in Bergen-Belsen, gave an emotional account of his return last year to the concentration camp where his grandmother, Rosalia Scheimowitz, died. "It is now a peaceful, tranquil, beautiful place but for me 63 years too late. When I arrived in 1944 it was 'hell on earth'."
A prayer by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin which is now said at Masses to mark the day was read by Prof Enda McDonagh of St Patrick's College: "On this Sunday that marks Holocaust memorial day, we pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God. As we recall their sufferings, we strengthen our resolve to reject discrimination and hatred."
Seamus Heaney recited from his poem A Sofa in the Forties about Irish children playing trains on their sofa and the contrast with the terror and tragedy of the Jews transported through Europe at that same time.
Senator Eoghan Harris recalled the massacre by the Nazis of thousands of Jews in Babi Yar, Ukraine in 1941 and recited from a poem about the murders: "I am each old man here shot dead/I am every child here shot dead/Nothing in me shall ever forget."
In Berlin, German chancellor Angela Merkel expressed concern about a worrying rise of "middle-class anti-Semitism" in Germany and called for greater discussion of the phenomenon.
