When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Saturday, January 27 is Holocaust Memorial Day, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We are invited to remember the victims of the Nazi Holocaust and victims of genocides since – in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur; the millions of innocent people who died at the hands of tyrants because others either stood silently by or turned away.

Although few survivors of the Nazi death camps are alive today, the consequences reach down through the generations. My son’s array of aunts, uncles and cousins curtailed through my grandfather being a victim. My father found a welcome in the UK as an unaccompanied child migrant; his mother escaped but never fully recovered. Staying with her during the holidays as a child, I would hear her sleep walk, calling out her lost husband’s name.

Why should this matter to those of us that live in Salisbury in 2018?

Because the roots of genocide lie not in the actions of perpetrators, but in anything that denies our common humanity and marks out those of a different race or ethnic tradition as somehow inferior. Celebrating diversity and difference, traditionally a hallmark of British society, is being replaced by a lack of respect and stereotyping. Easy to see in those who should know better; harder to notice in our own lives and the way we talk in front of our children.

It was so encouraging to see Wiltshire Council and Churches Together in Salisbury among the first to welcome refugees from Syria last year. Disturbing, a year on, to see the world becoming more isolationist. There are nearly a million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, almost half of them children, fleeing from systematic, state-sponsored, religious persecution, the ferocity and inhumanity of which cannot be diminished by its distance from our shores.

What can we do - apart from making a donation to one of the aid agencies working in the camps? We can reflect on what is widely regarded as the first step towards genocide – labelling and stereotyping. This year’s Memorial Day theme is ‘the power of words’. We can be careful in our use of language and call out those whose prejudice provides the fertile soil in which the seeds of hatred and repression germinate. Six million innocent victims surely deserve that at the very least…