When, as City of York Council’s executive member for leisure, culture and social inclusion, I agreed last summer to the proposal that the City of York commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, in a few weeks’ time, I asked, and it was agreed, that the day commemorate all genocides and not just the Holocaust.

I also urged that the day involve young people, in the hope that the next generation might learn from the mistakes of the past.

This was not because I wished in any way to undermine the enormity of the tragedy that was the Holocaust, but because I wanted to ensure that the day recognised that it is a sad fact of human history that many genocides have taken place throughout the 20th century and before; in Rwanda, in Cambodia, in Bosnia, in Turkey, and many other places.

I am particularly concerned at events currently taking place in Gaza. It is absolutely tragic that the state of Israel, with its troubled history and with so many of its citizens bearing the scars of the Holocaust, should be treating the Palestinian people in this way.

I recognise that there are those in the Middle East who continue to refuse the existence of the state of Israel, and that ordinary families in that country suffer as a result, but I cannot see that the continued breaching of UN resolutions by Israel and the killing of civilians in what is effectively the ghetto of the Gaza Strip can bring about anything other than more despair, more hatred, and more wasted lives.

I, for one, will be thinking of these things when I join with others to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day.

It is all very well commemorating the Holocaust, but if we do not learn from history then what have we achieved?

Coun Christian Vassie, Blake Court, Wheldrake, York.