The importance of Holocaust Memorial Day grows with each passing year.

Nearly eight decades after the defeat of Germany, we are approaching the point when there will be no living witnesses to the worst crime in history — at the very same time as when those who deny the Holocaust have ever more tools and outlets at their disposal for spreading their lies.

If we must prepare for the day when there will only be secondary sources to tell the story of what happened, that means doing as much as we can now, while we are still blessed with the presence of survivors, to share their testimony and to ensure that the enormity of the Shoah and what it represents is never diminished.

In that context, while it is important that all genocides are remembered and their lessons never forgotten, we must also be clear that the Holocaust was a unique evil, and that Holocaust Memorial Day must always be about remembering and learning from the Holocaust.

We can only truly understand the lessons of the Shoah if we acknowledge what made it unique. The Final Solution was perpetrated by the most apparently advanced civilisation on Earth, using the most sophisticated science, technology and logistics of the time; and it was an expression of the ancient, very particular prejudice of antisemitism.

Holocaust Memorial Day represents one annual opportunity for that incomprehensible horror to be remembered. It should not be diluted.