Thurrock Council has agreed to hold an event on January 27 every year to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day.
The proposal - put forward by council leader Andy Smith and seconded by opposition leader Anne Cheale - was endorsed unanimously at Wednesday's meeting of the full council.
Coun Smith said he was born in October 1949 and had no memory of the Second World War, but he added: "This is something we must never forget and something we must never allow to be forgotten."
Coun Alphonse Nuss - a child in occupied Belgium during the war - welcomed the proposal and said he could remember "these people taking friends away - I have seen it happen."
Several other councillors also spoke in favour of the plan, adding that the Memorial Day should not be limited to The Holocaust, but should be used to highlight the genocide, ethnic cleansing and killing that happened afterwards and is still going on.
Published Friday November 30, 2001
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