Sixty years ago today, the Soviet Army entered the town of Oswiecim close to the city of Krakow in southern Poland.

Oswiecim is better known around the world by its now infamous German name – Auschwitz.

What those Red Army soldiers found close to the village was was amounted to a site for industrial murder.

Over the years, Auschwitz has become the symbol of the overall Holocaust inflicted on millions of Europeans who did not fit in with Nazi Germany’s idea of a “perfect” race.

The Auschwitz gas chambers were murdering up to 6,000 humans a day in 1944.  All told, an estimated 1.5 million were starved and then slaughtered by the Nazis in this one death camp.

It should not be forgotten that while around one million of the victims were of the Jewish faith there were 500,000 others as well.

The other “misfits”, in Nazi eyes, were Gypsies, disabled people, Polish political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, Soviet prisoners of war …

… And homosexuals, who were identified as they wore pink triangles on their clothes, and sometimes these triangles were used for target practice by Nazi guards.

It is estimated about 50,000 gay men lost their lives in all Nazi concentration camps, where they were also often despised and beaten up by fellow inmates.  The number of Jewish people slaughtered in all concentration camps is said to be between five and six million. The six "death camps" were in occupied Poland.

On this symbolic day as we remember the victims of Nazi genocide, we must also look at the present and realise that we still haven’t come to terms with those amongst us who do not fit into a traditional stereotype.

There are, to this day, a handful of countries where there is still a death penalty for being gay.

As gays, we know that much still has to be done in the human rights field, not only for ourselves, but also for other minorities. And not only in our own countries, but around the world.

It is right that we should commemorate the Holocaust today.  As Rabbi Michael Melchior, the Israeli Minister of Eductation, told The Independent this week: No crime in history has been so documented as Auschwitz. But we have to teach Auschwitz in the right way, that when we deal with anti-Semitism we are also fighting for dignity for every human being”.

Also, it is equally important that we should realises that the mass-killings by the Nazis came about because Hitler portrayed Jews, and, to a lesser extent, gays and Gypsies as “the enemy”, instilling a sense of fear among the people of Germany in the 1930s.  As a result, Hitler became more powerful.

To a far lesser degree, the creation of fear by politicians goes on today.  Here in the UK, it is “asylum seekers”, with the tabloids going into overdrive and making the public fearful of any foreigner who wants to escape tyranny in his native country.

In the United States, George W. Bush preached both the fear of terrorism and the fear of gays being a threat to the sanctity of traditional marriage.  Such was the fear, he got re-elected and now sees himself as a more powerful leader, as the veteran former British politician Tony Benn has said.

It is ironic that in the week when the Red Army reached Auschwitz, sixty years on another “red army” created a brouhaha over a children’s cartoon character being used, with other animated characters, in an educational video to teach young American children about tolerance –  this “army” says SpongeBob SquarePants is gay!

Will we ever learn from history?

■ Historical documents show that 50,000 gay men were sent to concentration camps — and their deaths.  Some of these were both Jewish and gay.  It is estimated that a total of 100,000 gay men were arrested by the Nazis.  An unknown number of gays were put into mental hospitals, and hundreds of gays living in German-occupied countries in Europe were castrated.

Lesbians were not treated as harshly, but they were deemed to be anti-social but they were not sent to concentration camps.

27 January  2005