Britain to play leading role in Holocaust remembrance

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said here Monday that Britain will play a leading role in remembering the Holocaust internationally.

"We commit ourselves to commemorate and to combat the hatred which allowed such heinous crimes to take place, and to do our utmost to prevent them from ever happening again," Xinhua quoted Hague as saying in a statement to mark the United Nations' International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It is estimated that about six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during World War II.

"The lessons of that terrible time must never be forgotten, for today and the future," Hague noted.

"We remember in particular the uprooting and herding of families across Europe; the separation of children from their families on The Kindertransport; the death marches and those few brave escapes," he added.

The Kindertransport, literally meaning "Children's Transport", refers to a series of rescue operations bringing thousands of refugee Jewish children to safety in Britain from Nazi Germany controlled areas between 1938 and 1940, according to the Holocaust and the UN Outreach Programme, the UN's Holocaust remembrance initiative.

In March, Britain is slated to take on the chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a Berlin-based intergovernmental body dedicated to Holocaust education, remembrance and research.