Every new generation must be educated about the past.

We must remember the horrors of the Holocaust, and the hatred that gave birth to such incomprehensible destruction and death, so we can learn from our history.

We must listen to the survivors, and share their stories. Above all, we must never forget the horrors they experienced.

To someone I have never forgotten and I will never forget.

The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored murder of approximately six million Jewish men, women and children in Europe.

In 1933 the National Socialist (Nazi) party, led by Adolf Hitler in Germany, rose to power.

The Nazis promoted hateful, antisemitic beliefs that included the idea that Jewish people were racially inferior and the root of all of Germany’s economic and social problems.

Once in power the Nazis immediately began to restrict Jewish citizenship, rights and freedoms.

These restrictions led to violent attacks, persecution and, eventually, to the establishment of gas chambers and death camps (concentration camps).

For the Nazis, this was the ‘Final Solution’ to the Jewish question. The purpose of the ‘Final Solution’ was to rid Europe of every last Jew.

The Nazis also targeted other groups they deemed inferior, including Roma people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Slavic peoples, Communists, Socialists and anyone with differing political or ideological ideas.

However, the Jewish people were the only ones targeted for complete annihilation.

The end of World War II brought an end to Nazi rule. Unfortunately the end of the war did not end the hatred and persecution of Jewish people.

While the establishment of the State of Israel provided an opportunity for the safe return of the Jewish people to their ancestral home land, racism and antisemitism remains an increasing concern.

Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He lived in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II.

He survived the Janowska concentration camp (late 1941 to September 1944), the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp (September to October 1944), the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.

And a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp (February to 5 May 1945).

When my life is over, I shall meet up with those who perished, and they will ask me, ‘What have you done?’ At that moment, I will have the honor of telling them; ‘I have never forgotten you.’ – Simon Wiesenthal

After the war, Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial.

He played a small role in locating Adolf Eichmann, who was captured in Buenos Aires in 1960. Wiesenthal died in his sleep at age 96 in Vienna on 20 September 2005.

Perhaps his greatest legacy has come in the form of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization dedicated to not only preserving the memory of the holocaust for future generations but fighting to eradicate racism, bigotry and prejudice wherever they may rear their ugly heads in the World.

It is through the efforts of an organization such as this that any future genocides and holocausts can, hopefully, be averted.

Wiesenthal never saw himself as a hero and intensely disliked having that label applied to him.

He always knew that he was just an ordinary man forced to live an extraordinary life by virtue of the role fate had mapped out for him.

Haunted by what he had seen and experienced in the death camps, he knew he would never be able to live at ease with his conscience if he had turned his back on the millions of less fortunate individuals who did not make it out alive and would otherwise have no other voice to speak for them.