Holocaust Memorial Day 2016: 10 reasons it's essential we never forget this uniquely evil event

On 27 January 2016, Britain marks the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi death camps. Overall, six million Jews were murdered in a systematic attempt to erase all traces of the Jewish race from Europe. Now, as Europe is once more contending with millions of migrants fleeing war and persecution, we must heed the lessons of the Holocaust, or Shoah, more than ever.

It would be ludicrous and disrespectful to compare what happened during World War II to current news events, like asking migrants to wear red wrist-bands or to stay in houses with red doors. Yet religious intolerance and anti-Semitism are once again on the rise. People are dying because of their religion; war is on Europe's doorstep, and occasionally within. Now is the time to remind ourselves what can happen when hatred and intolerance are allowed to triumph over tolerance and humanity. To learn from history and ensure it never happens again.

1. Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, yet others survived; some are still with us. When Holocaust-deniers are once more disseminating their poison, we should listen to those who were actually there and witnessed the horror.

2. Anti-Semitism is on the rise. The Metropolitan Police reports 2015 as being the worst year for anti-Semitism on record. Many European Jews - particularly in France - are emigrating to Israel because they feel unsafe.

3. The Holocaust was on a unique scale, but as the horrors of Rwanda, Bosnia and Syria have shown, religious and racial intolerance remains endemic and can lead to wholesale slaughter.

4. Some of the language used against Jewish people in the 1930s is now used against Muslims in the UK. But that's okay, because the Holocaust could never happen here - could it?

5. Holocaust-denial isn't confined to loony authors and fascists; some governments apparently still believe it, too.

6. The Holocaust is the only event which is a compulsory part of the British history curriculum, but more teachers are needed to teach it.

7. Two thirds of all Europe's Jews were murdered as part of what was called the "Final Solution." Millions of ordinary people allowed it to happen - or were too scared to stop it taking place. Only by studying the Holocaust can we understand why people allowed such evil.

8. Each Holocaust Memorial Day, people of every religious persuasion and those of none take the opportunity to come together, pause and consider what happens when intolerance gains the upper hand.

9. Learning about the Holocaust shouldn't be seen as an ordeal. Wonderful art has arisen from the dreadful event - such as Primo Levi's "If this is a man," Vasily Grossman's "Life and Fate", films like "Schindler's List" and "The boy in the striped pyjamas", and even artwork produced by victims.

10. Reducing the horrors of the Holocaust to a simple list of 10 doesn't do justice to its scale and the human stories involved: the torture, experiments, families torn apart, the horrors of the gas chambers and the way it impacts on the world to this day. There's only one list that does justice to the Holocaust: the list of the six million who perished.