This past week, the Israeli embassy in Sofia and the synagogue in the capital city joined in solemn commemorations around the world of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Occasions such as a Yom Hashoa service serve as, among other aspects, a rallying moment to work to ensure that such a travesty never happens again. At more than six million, Jews were the main target for extinction by the Nazi death machine. Other categories were also targeted, including Roma and people politically unpalatable to the regime. Many were complicit in the Holocaust, not merely those who created the genocidal system. It has been said before: someone drew up the train schedule. In addition, it cannot be forgotten that there were those who were aware to one degree or another of what was happening, and did and said little or nothing to prevent it.

It is equally valid to point out that there were those who did take steps to oppose, or at very least undermine, the machinery of the Holocaust. There were those who concealed potential victims or provided false papers, identities and means of escape.

Courageous Bulgarians and Danes of conscience prevented the deportations of significant numbers of those earmarked for deportation and eventual murder. Human conscience did not fail entirely, and this is remembered.

The threats that arise from racism and ethnic intolerance remain with us today. No country in the world is free from racism; the extent of the infection is only a question of degree. In the Nazi era, Europe, that had prided itself as the vanguard of civilisation, saw its technology turned to lethal purposes. One country was the headquarters of this process, but others on this continent had citizens who lent the process a helping hand. None of this must be forgotten, as today ethnic cleansing is again a recent memory on this continent, and it may persuasively be argued that this continent’s leaders and people have done too little to act against such gross abuses of human rights current elsewhere on the globe. In every human engagement, from simple everyday interaction to the highest levels of inter-state and multilateral diplomacy, consciences must be examined to ask whether all is being done to ensure that the evil is never unleashed again. The path from the racist epithet, or even the failure to object to such epithets and sentiments, to the cattle trucks and beyond is not a very long one. Today, while moral principle rather than self-interest should be the guide of conduct, one might well recall the lines usually attributed to German pastor Martin Niemoeller:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.