I must have been about four when my Grandma told me about the Holocaust, about the millions of Jewish people taken from their homes and families, starved and subjected to the most brutal treatment in concentration camps. The utter horror of the mass executions shocked me and helped spark in me a lifelong regard for human rights and commitment to making sure that nothing like that could ever happen again. Later on, I realised that Roma, gay people, trade unionists, disabled people and pretty much anyone else whose face didn’t fit were also persecuted.

My Grandma had lost her Dad, who had been on HMS Courageous, in the first fortnight of the War. She ended it in Germany, where my Grandad was a doctor with the forces and where my Dad was born in December 1945. The horrors of the Nazi atrocities were very real to her and she was keen to make sure that future generations understood the dangers and horrors.

It’s worrying that 1 in 20 UK adults, according to a poll reported by BBC News think that the holocaust didn’t take place and 1 in 8 think that it has been exaggerated.

In an article for the Guardian last November, Hope not Hate’s Joe Mulhall looked at how holocaust denial is changing as the alt-right rises. It’s belittled, mocked and joked about on social media.

For many young far-right activists the Holocaust is shorn of historical significance, diminished by time and absent from their collective consciousness, as it was not for previous generations throughout the postwar period. Far-right Holocaust denial is changing and if we are to be ready to fight back against those who seek to rewrite history for their own political ends, we have to understand how they are trying to do it.

So what can we do about it? As ever, support education about this grim moment in human history and stand up when we see people being targeted with prejudice and discrimination based on who they are. We can’t ever put up with anti-semitism, islamophobia, transphobia, misogyny, prejudice against immigrants, attacks on disabled people. All of these are increasingly prevalent in our society.

This video from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust sums it up:

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. Together, we must learn from genocide, challenge prejudice and create a better future.

Watch and share our film for #HolocaustMemorialDay pic.twitter.com/llk5GS3Znh

— Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (@HMD_UK) January 27, 2019

Senior Liberal Democrats have been marking Holocaust Memorial Day:

On Holocaust Memorial Day we remember all those who lost their lives during the terrible evil of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides. Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor @SiobhanBenita shares her thoughts as we remember these tragedies.#HMD2019 pic.twitter.com/QQNG2iGkzu

— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) January 27, 2019

On Holocaust Memorial Day let us strengthen our resolve to build a more open and tolerant world and to build a world free from all forms of hate and discrimination, and in particular persecution of groups on the basis of race or religion. #HMD2019https://t.co/BMFpa1NiD1

— Vince Cable (@vincecable) January 27, 2019

With affection, I think of the warm, friendly, welcoming Jewish people, friends & strangers, who I’ve met over the years. And then I think of how many more I could have met if it were not for the Holocaust. Now, more than ever, we must recognise growing antisemitism & counter it.

— Brian Paddick 🇬🇧👨‍❤️‍👨🇳🇴 (@brianpaddick) January 27, 2019

My thoughts are with the victims of the Holocaust this #HMD2019. As the Holocaust moves from living history, to just history, it is ever more important that we take the time to remember the victims & pay tribute to the survivors who work tirelessly to educate young people today. pic.twitter.com/g1CTJg5vmu

— Tom Brake MP (@thomasbrake) January 27, 2019

In a Commons debate marking Holocaust Memorial Day, Jamie Stone recounted the visit of an orchestra to the Highlands back in 1987:

Mr Deputy Speaker, I wonder whether I might crave your indulgence and that of the Chamber and share an anecdote—a memory. Thirty-two years ago I was, believe it or not—it was a long time ago—the youngest councillor in Ross and Cromarty in the highlands. In those days, the link between the arts and local government was not particularly there to be seen, but we had a very forward-looking chief executive called Douglas Sinclair, who is sadly no longer with us. He really did catapult Ross and Cromarty into having a really enlightened arts policy. He was a great supporter of the Labour party. I put that on the record with some pleasure, because a man like that deserves to be remembered in Hansard.

Mr Douglas Sinclair got Julian Lloyd Webber to come and play in my hometown of Tain. He got in place a writer in residence and a poet in residence, and the arts flourished in the far north of Scotland. I particularly remember one cold winter’s night, when we were bidden through to a concert in the town hall in Dingwall, the county town of Ross and Cromarty. When we sat down, the first thing I noticed was that there were two Mozart piano concertos on the programme, but for some reason the old upright piano in the town hall had not been exchanged for a rather more splendid grand. The upright piano had probably only ever had “Chopsticks” played on it for the previous 20 years. Nevertheless, in came the orchestra. If my memory serves me rightly, they were called the International Orchestra of New York, and they played with considerable verve. The poor old upright piano did not know what had hit it: moths came out of the top and we thought the sides were going to fall off. They dropped the odd note and the odd chord was wrong, but by gosh they put their hearts into it.

At the interval—it is not the way in the highlands to have posh glasses of champagne as they do in London or these splendid places down here; in the highlands we have egg sandwiches, shortbread and tea—the whole ​audience mixed with the orchestra. Within minutes of my talking to the orchestra—you can guess what is coming, Mr Deputy Speaker—it became apparent that they were survivors of the camps. They told me that they had played for their lives in the camps, and now they were playing for us as a celebration of life. One of them rolled up his sleeve—he was wearing white tie—and showed me his tattoo. In those short minutes over our eats and our tea, we were all moved by these people being with us, and having come to the north of Scotland.

When we sat down again for the second piano concerto, which I remember very well was Mozart’s 23rd, we hung on every note. Every mistake—they were rather elderly—was ignored. We cheered them to the rafters when they sat down at the end of the last movement and we encored them furiously. Somehow, our enthusiasm caught on with them and they responded. That piano has never since recovered.

That is my anecdote. In just one event in my life, the very people who had survived were there, and that brought home to me, more than anything else probably could have done, what the holocaust was. Those good people are probably no longer with us, because it was a long time ago and they were elderly then, but that is my memory, and it serves me strongly when it comes to remembering, as we shall do, the horrors of the holocaust, and never forgetting. I tell you this, Mr Deputy Speaker: I cannot listen to Mozart’s beautiful 23rd piano concerto without remembering those good, noble and brave people.

As we lose those who have first hand recollections of just how brutal the Holocaust was, we reach a dangerous point where it is not taken so seriously. It is so important that we don’t forget and we recognise and deal with the building blocks of hatred so that nothing like this can ever happen again. As liberals this is a core part of our mission.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings