“I want to advise youths to speak out and expose all atrocities happening in our society; doing that will help to avoid situations that will lead to vices affecting man from enjoying his environment.”

These were the words of the Charge de Affairs at the Israeli Embassy to Cameroon, Orli Gil, on Wednesday, January 27, 2016, during the commemoration of the 2016 Holocaust Remembrance Day.

According to Orli Gil, it was due to the absence of dialogue within the people who could not express what was going on during the Nazi rule in Germany in 1933 that led to the massive killing of six million Jews.

The Israeli diplomat told students from Government High School Cite Verte and Tsinga alongside the civil society that under the rule of Adolf Hitler, the persecution and segregation of Jews was implemented in stages leading to large scale genocide.

To her, remembering the victims and honouring the courage of the survivors and those who assisted and liberated them is a step towards helping to prevent such atrocities and reject the hateful mentality that allows them to happen.

Held under the theme, “The Holocaust and Human dignity”, the KMA Information officer of the United Information Centre for Cameroon, Central African Republic and Gabon, Jean Njita, said abstaining from all forms of discrimination as well as racism and religious intolerance will help stop genocide from ever occurring in the world again.

He further said youth are the focus because they are flexible, carrying hopes of tomorrow and more especially they are exposed to social media which can inspire some of them to engage in vices that cannot be controlled.

Since war as well as peace starts in the mind, educating the youth will help them to transmit information to the next generation leading to a free society void of problems.

To better understand how the holocaust was carried out and its consequences, films were projected from which students and the media clarified some points.

The holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.