It was incredibly moving to be at the Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration in Brighton this week.
It is a day of remembrance and an opportunity to remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, alongside all those murdered in the genocides since.
It is also a chance to listen and learn from the people and their families whose lives were ripped apart.
This year is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau several years ago.
Despite visiting many museums and education centres, having read books and learnt of the history, the scale and impact of what happened in the Holocaust is only truly understood when you see the mountains of hair, spectacles and shoes taken from those who lost their lives.
The concentration camp is vast, with row upon row of wooden huts and to walk into the gas chamber brings with it the full realisation of the number of people who never walked out again, as we did.
Each of the speakers at this year’s memorial event had a powerful story to tell and each story was told with such dignity, evoking an extraordinary stillness in a room of nearly 200 people.
The first speaker Bryan Huberman took us on the journey of his father Alfred Huberman who was forced out of one home and into ghettos and then to a slave labour camp.
With only rations of coffee for breakfast and a watery soup of rotten vegetables for lunch it was incredible he survived.
Alfred was finally liberated in 1945 when he came to the UK as part of a group of 732 orphaned child survivors of Nazi concentration camps. Their story was shared in The Windermere Children on BBC TV on Monday.
Vivenie Mugunga then spoke to us about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 when approximately one million people were murdered.
Vivenie told us of her very personal experiences and it was clear that it was harrowing for her to do so.
The room stayed very quiet with each of us silently supporting her to continue.
When people speak of genocide, they often talk in numbers. But these were real people with real lives, families, jobs, homes, hopes and dreams – just like you and me.
The people who so generously shared their personal stories gave us their memories and we owe it to them never to forget.
Councillor Nancy Platts is the Labour leader of Brighton and Hove City Council.
