FAITH leaders urged people to take ‘individual responsibility’ for discrimination that took place around them at a Holocaust Memorial Day service in Oxford.

Speaking at the Town Hall yesterday, Penny Faust of the Oxford Jewish Congregation said current world events showed hate and intolerance were on the rise, but people could make a difference in their own day-to-day lives.

Mrs Faust said: “Holocaust Memorial Day is predicated on the idea that if we talk to young people about the horror of the Holocaust and remember it, then it will not happen again. But there are all too many cases in the world where genocide is still taking place, the deliberate killing of one group of people – not for any rational reason simply because of who they are.

“But there are individual choices leading to that point.

“In this country, most of us have never had to face up to what genocide means. We are even complacent about it and say ‘it could never happen here’.

“We ignore dangerous signs. Just this year we have heard our politicians using language about people, refugees and asylum seekers, that previously would have been seen as utterly abhorrent.”

“But we must all take individual responsibility for preventing [discrimination].

“At an international level we may feel powerless, but in our own lives we are not.”