Christians are standing with the worldwide Jewish community on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The notorious concentration camp, where nearly a million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, came to symbolise the horrors and unimaginable brutality of the Holocaust. It was liberated on 27 January 1945 by the Russians.
Survivors of the Holocaust were gathering at Auschwitz on Monday to mark the anniversary. The Duchess of Cornwall and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, are some of the international leaders who will be joining them.
The Council of Christians and Jews have published a prayer for Christians to use in conjunction with the anniversary, which acknowledges that "during the Holocaust too many failed to stand together with their neighbours".
It commits Christians to remembering survivors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, and their stories, and to glorify God in words and actions.
The theme for this year's Holocaust Memorial Day is "Stand Together".
Launching the CCJ prayer, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Rt Rev Colin Sinclair, said that the theme was a "rallying call to resist all those who would encourage a way of thinking, to create caricatures, and to reinforce stereotypes that polarises people into 'us' and 'them'".
"For, in so doing, they deliberately fracture societies, marginalise certain groups and shape the climate whereby propaganda, fake news and urban myths are allowed room to grow," he said.
"This can lead to exclusion, discrimination, and, at in extreme cases, can justify cruelty, violence and even genocide.
"Genocide is part of our generation's lived experience, touching lives repeatedly over the last 80 years. We need to tell the shocking story, separating the facts from the fiction, confronting holocaust deniers with the truth, explaining both what happened and why it happened in different parts of the world and to different groups of people. Important though that is, for memory is short and fickle, it is not enough.
"We need to stand together with our neighbours, whoever they may be, affirming our common humanity, giving to all dignity, value and worth. We need to speak out against aggression in thought, speech and action, wherever we find it. We need to challenge a hostile culture, oppose persecution, and stand together against rising division and hate."
Going on to say that the world must not allow the Holocaust to happen again, he said it was also a "day of great sorrow" for the Church because of its complicity, which he said had, for some, undermined faith in God and in humanity.
"This day, is a day of great sorrow for the Church, as we recall centuries of anti-Jewish sentiment in writing and preaching over the last 2000 years by both Protestants and Catholic," he said.
"Reformers and Catholics stand equally indicted. Luther, Calvin, and Wesley stand alongside the sermons of John Chrysostom, the crusades of Pope Urban II in the 1090s and the ghettos of Pope Pius VII in the 1820s and the list goes on and on.
"Those of us who are ministers to this day know how easily, in teaching the Christian faith, we have been careless in our words not aware of the impact they have encouraging caricature and prejudice that give support for antisemitism.
"Today we want to stand together against lazy thinking and sloppy speech, aware of how terrible the consequences can be."
The CCJ's prayer can be read in full below:
God of the past, present and future,
We remember, today, 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz,
The six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust,
The millions of other victims of Nazi persecution,
And all those who have been targeted and killed in subsequent genocides,
We remember those who, having survived genocide, share their stories with us,
We give thanks to You for the lessons of human stories,
Both in their suffering and in their joy,
We remember those who stood up against injustice and saved lives,
We give thanks to You for their example,
Together we acknowledge the sacrifice of those who stood together
With those who suffered during the Holocaust and other genocides,
And we affirm that every life is loved by You and sacred,
Yet, during the Holocaust too many failed to stand together with their neighbours.
Oppression stains Your world and contradicts Your love.
So we pray that You will inspire us now as we stand together on this day,
In the love that we know of God through Jesus Christ,
Let us commit to remembering and glorify God in our words and actions,
We make these prayers in the name of Christ Jesus,
Who through His life, death and resurrection, journeys with us into the eternal hope
Of Your truth and light,
Amen.
