Cardinal's message for Holocaust Memorial Day

The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has sent the following message to the organisers of Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place this Friday, 27 January. History's greatest evil remains barely graspable by the human mind. But I glimpsed something of it at a visit once to Auschwitz, where a room contained suitcases stamped with the initials of those who were taken to the gas chamber. Their suitcases, and their names, were stripped from them: the Jews and others whom the Nazis scapegoated had to be de-humanised in order to be slaughtered. The warning is clear: wherever dehumanisation takes hold, terrible evil is sure to follow. That is why the message of the Shoah remains one of the defence of the God-given intrinsic dignity of all human beings, of which the right to life is the primordial. This is a right which comes with birth; it is not a concession of the state or the law. It cannot be given and taken away. It is the indelible mark of God in us, and its denial is a sacrilege. The Catholic Church solemnly teaches that Jesus was a descendant of David; that Mary and the Apostles belonged to the Jewish people; that the Church is nourished by its roots in Judaism; and that the Jews are our 'elder brothers and sisters' in faith. The Catholic people of the world stand with Jews against anti-semitism and holocaust denial, and in defence of the God-given dignity of all human beings. We are one human family: today's commemoration is especially that of the Jewish people, but it is also that of the victims of genocide everywhere and throughout history. We can never forget. Source: Archbishop's House