Vatican City, Jan 27, 2017 / 11:43 am
In a message marking Friday's observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, a Vatican official has said it is reminder that we need to maintain vigilance against violations of human dignity.
"First and foremost, remembrance of the Holocaust, the Shoah – the planned annihilation of the Jewish people, and the planned extermination of Roma and Sinti and other groups of people – brings to mind all the victims of those most heinous crimes against humanity, whose terrible suffering unmasks the complete disregard for the inherent dignity of every person," Monsignor Janusz Urbanczyk, the Vatican's permanent representative fo the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said at the group's Jan. 27 meeting.
Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the anniverary of the liberation of prisoners of Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945.
During World War II, more than 6 million Jews and at least 5 million non-Jewish Poles, Slavs, Romani, Soviets, Catholics, homosexuals, disabled persons, and political and religious dissidents were murdered at the hands of Nazis. The Nazi party justified its persecution and treatment of its victims by calling them subhuman and inferior "lives unworthy of life."