Leader of the Welsh Conservatives and Clwyd West MS Darren Millar attended an event in Cardiff this week to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi Persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. 

Darren was one of a number of political leaders at Wales’ national commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day, which took place on Monday.

The poignant service was also attended by religious leaders, as well as Holocaust survivor Peter Lantos BEM.

A representative from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust also joined young ambassadors who told of their experiences of the Lessons from Auschwitz project which is open to 16 to 18-year-old students.

Speaking afterwards, Darren, who arranged for the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Book of Commitment to be available for MSs to sign in the Senedd, said:

“It is vital that the Senedd and the nation of Wales takes the time to remember and reflect upon the horrors of the Holocaust and all genocides since, and Holocaust Memorial Day helps us to do just that. 

“The service on Monday was extremely moving and it was a privilege to hear from Holocaust survivor Peter Lantos.

“Peter was born in Hungary in 1939. In the summer of 1944 he was deported with his parents to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany where his father died of starvation. He and his mother survived and were liberated by the US Army outside Magdeburg which soon afterwards became the Soviet zone of occupation.

“After several months of uncertainty, they escaped from the Russians, and travelling across war-torn Europe returned to Hungary. Many members of his large family had perished in the Holocaust.

“As Peter has said ‘antisemitism, the hatred of Jews which fuelled the Holocaust, is alive and well everywhere, including this country’.

“As Welsh Conservatives, we stand firmly against all forms of hatred. We honour the victims of the holocaust by recommitting to vigilance, education and action, so that no generation ever faces such evil again.”