Truro Cathedral's special service on Holocaust Memorial Day to be streamed live
Community groups from across Cornwall are coming together to share their stories
Last updated 27th Jan 2022
Community groups from across Cornwall are coming together on Holocaust Memorial Day.
Those who have suffered persecution or could face persecution will gather to share stories at Truro Cathedral on Thursday morning, where a special service is being held.
The cathedral is also staging an exhibition, provided by Devon and Cornwall Police's diversity team.
It outlines how hate speech and hate crime fed into the genocide of the Jews, and others, during the Second World War.
The exhibition further reflects on how prejudices in other countries, and between peoples, have fed genocides that have followed in Bosnia and Rwanda and elsewhere since that time.
It will run until Friday 28th January with the aim to break the link between the demonising of difference and the conflict and atrocities that can follow.
Speaking about the exhibition, Canon Chancellor Alan Bashforth said: "That really talks about how, very sadly, in the past we've moved from the business of what we would now call hate speech - almost calling people names to the point where that has led to genocide.
"Sadly we have to reflect also that the tragic and dreadful genocide of the Jews and others in the Second World War, was not the end of that phenomena in our world and other communities have experienced that since; that's a great sadness.
"It is a time to look back and reflect on those bad things of the past but at the same time, it's a proper day to try and look forward and say we don't intend this to happen again.
"We will not actually involve ourselves in the kind of language of hating people because, for one reason or another, we perceive that they're different from us in a kind of way".
Alan added: "We speak here, in the cathedral, of sacred space and common ground and this is a day where we gather on common ground as human beings and say something about our common humanity.
"The kind of central ethic if loving your neighbour as yourself, kind of no matter what your neighbour looks like or what your neighbour believes or all those other things we may try and use to identify somebody as 'not like me' in some way".
The Holocaust Memorial Day service at Truro Cathedral will take place at 1pm on Thursday 27 January.
It also being streamed on the cathedral's YouTube channel and you watch that below...