On Holocaust Remembrance Day, pope warns mass extermination could happen again

Pope Francis marks Holocaust Remembrance Day by warning that warped ideologies can pave the way to another mass extermination.

Francis speaks off the cuff at the end of his weekly general audience, held in his private library because of coronavirus restrictions, to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, where Nazis killed more than 1 million Jews and others.

The Argentine pope insists on the need to remember, saying it was a sign of humanity and a condition for a peaceful future. But he says remembering “also means to be aware that these things can happen again, starting with ideological proposals that claim to save a people and end up destroying a people and humanity.”

He warns that the Holocaust began that way, opening “this path of death, extermination and brutality.”

Francis prayed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial during his 2016 visit to Poland.

Pope Francis prays in front of a memorial at the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Oswiecim, Poland, July 29, 2016. (L’Osservatore Romano/Pool photo via AP)