This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1.1 million people, 90 per cent of them Jews, were killed by the Nazis.

The speeches by survivors of the camp, the laying of wreaths at its ‘Death Wall’ and the lighting of candles in the snow on the tracks that brought prisoners to it were all incredibly moving.

As I watched, I recalled the Holocaust survivor I previously had the chance to listen to with pupils at Hardenhuish School in Chippenham, at an event made possible by the work of the Holocaust Education Trust.

As we remember the millions who died in the Holocaust and other genocides since, news bulletins covering events from a Jewish supermarket in Paris to violence in Nigeria make painfully clear that anti-Semitism and other religious persecution is still a serious problem today.

Last week I attended the launch of a report by Open Doors on the persecution of Christians around the world. We heard about the more than 4,000 Christians who were killed for their faith last year, more than double the number in 2013.

The report sets out how the rise of the extremist IS militia has seen an increase in religious violence in Iraq and Syria, with hundreds of thousands of Christians forced to flee the area it controls, but it also reminds us that: “North Korea is still the most difficult place in the world to be a Christian”.

The shocking acts and atrocities we read about all too often in newspapers and reports such as this require us not simply to remember the Holocaust, but to resolve that this evil must never be allowed to happen again, and to heed the words of Auschwitz survivor Roman Kent, who said on Tuesday: “We do not want our past to be our children’s future.”

That requires challenging all forms of prejudice and hatred, including anti-Semitism, and defending the rights of all to live in peace and security, with freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

It means we must reject the idea that we should look on those of a different religion or race or culture as ‘other’, and instead come together to stand against persecution wherever it exists.

My next constituency surgeries will be at The Pound arts centre in Corsham on Friday, from 9.30am–11am; and at Bradford on Avon library on Friday, February 13, from noon – 1.30pm.