Today, until sunset tonight is Yom HaShoah, the day that Jews throughout the world remember the Holocaust. In the UK it is one of the two big memorial days for the Holocaust or Shoah, as it is called in Hebrew. There a State organised memorial day in Britain at the end of January on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and today, which is primarily a Jewish religious day of remembrance.

Here, where we are almost the only Jews in the village, we lit a candle for an elderly German woman from Berlin who perished in the Shoah along with six million other Jews. Like the vast majority of the Jews who were murdered, she has nobody else but us and those like us who still remember, to light a candle for them and honour their memory and to pledge again ‘Never Again’. It’s customary in Jewish communities for families who are related to those who have died to light a candle for them on the anniversary of their deaths, but the scale of the Shoah was so great that too many of the people who were murdered, were also murdered alongside the family members who should have lit candles for them. We, who are not facing what they faced, light the candles for those who are not able to have their families light candles for them. We pledge to remember each individual and what we know of their story, for today and for future generations.

May the memory of those martyred by the Germans and their allies be for a blessing. May the current enemies of the Jewish people, the Leftists, the Mohammedans and the more deranged among those on the right, groups who would quite like to see the horrors of the past repeated, face the defeat they deserve. May they too learn from history.