Today is of course the anniversary of the freeing by Russian soldiers of the survivors of Auschwitz and is observed in many countries as Holocaust Memorial Day.
Of course at the time, in 1945, the Russian Gulags were already open and many more would be built; not long afterwards millions died in China for a belief no more defensible than antisemitism; persecution of religious and tribal minorities still goes on in Africa, and we have had ethnic cleansing as close as the Balkans.
Holocaust Memorial Day is important to some, but there is no practical value to it; it has not brought an end to these horrors and nor will it ever. It is an opportunity for smug politicians to make worthy speeches. You can read them in the papers tomorrow. I shan't.
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