I WISH to express heartfelt thanks to City of York Council, businesses, fellow charitable organisations and individual residents for their commitment to Holocaust Memorial Day events across our city.

I welcome inspirational civic event speaker Lars Waldorf, of the University of York, who is the senior lecturer at the Applied Centre for Human Rights at the University, and lectured David Kato during his time in the city.

David befriended many and we greatly admired his commitment, struggle and fight for equality and rights for gay men and women in Uganda. David was subsequently murdered on return to Uganda after a newspaper calling for his execution published his name and photograph on its front page.

The civic event coincides a year to the day of David’s death, on the January 26 at Tempest Anderson Hall in the Museum Gardens. Free tickets are available by emailing artseducation@york.gov.uk. A candle-lit vigil will be held at Clifford’s Tower on the same evening from 6pm.

The Holocaust memorial events help people to better understand the steps which lead to genocide, which include failure of political leadership, institutions co-operating with an ideology of hate, seeing some people as less human or ‘different’, and the erosion of human values.

Dan Sidley, Chair, York & District Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Forum