When Hitler seized power in trodden-down Germany in 1933, Germany having lost the (First) World War and endured 15 years of a troubled economy, he founded the motor company Volkswagen to build cars, employing thousands of workers who had been out of work, and built motorways.

If he had continued these good beginnings with other schemes he could have become a great statesman.

However, he hated Jews and began a systematic softening up of the media encouraging them to do likewise. Soon anti-Semitism caught on and the population went along with the stream.

He created specialist units of men: SA, SS and secret police, some with criminal records, to instil fear into the Jewish population who had been highly integrated into German society.

Jewish professionals lost their jobs even though they did their work highly efficiently, businesses were sidelined or confiscated, and soon Jews were arrested and imprisoned for no other reason than that they were Jews.

In November 1938, most Synagogues were destroyed and Jews began to be sent to concentration camps. From 1941 onwards this deportation of Jews to camps was intensified using trains, later composed only of cattle trucks, sometimes taking days to reach their destination without food, water or sanitation. Many already died on the journey.

On arrival, families were torn apart without them being able to say goodbye, some indiscriminately led straight to gas chambers to be suffocated, others kept on one side to endure a lingering death by starvation and fortuitously inhuman treatment.

In the camps, a degree of cruelty was used such as had never been experienced before nor since.

Not only were Jews and other minorities put to death, but unspeakable wanton cruelty was employed in the process.

Six million Jews are estimated to have died in what has become known as the Holocaust.

To commemorate this unholy tragedy, Holocaust Memorial Day is observed in many countries. In Bradford it will take place today at 11 am in the City Hall.

Rudi Leavor, chairman, Bradford Synagogue