Boris Johnson stressed the importance of keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive at City Hall on Tuesday.

After hosting an HMD ceremony for survivors, civic and Jewish community leaders and students, the London Mayor said: “It’s so easy to become desensitised to the events of the Holocaust and forget how important it was. That would be tragic. We have to keep driving the message.

“I was thinking about why this message resonates so strong in London and it’s because so many London children come from backgrounds that are familiar with that sort of persecution. There are events, while not as horrific or colossal in scale as the Holocaust, which are nonetheless analogous in one way or another and I think that’s why it does have a meaning to lots of people here.”

Survivors Gena Turgel and Zigi Shipper were other speakers, as was Israeli violin-maker Amnon Weinstein who discussed his work restoring instruments from the Holocaust.

Mr Johnson said it was “incredibly important that these survivors are here to remind us of what really happened and that we shouldn’t forget”.