Holocaust Memorial Day marks the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945, and remembers those who died in the Holocaust and under Nazi persecution, and during subsequent genocides, such as Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.

New College Library holds this pamphlet, Nazi massacres of the Jews & others : some practical proposals for immediate rescue made by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Rochester in speeches on March 23rd 1943 in the House of Lords. The author, William Temple (1881-1944) was a bishop in the Church of England who served as Archbishop of York  Archbishop of Canterbury between 1942–44.

One of the founders of the Council of Christians and Jews in 1942,  Temple was at the forefront of the Church of England’s campaign to draw attention to the plight of the Jews in Europe and to demand that the British Government provide rescue and sanctuary for Jewish victims. His speech urges:

“The Jews are being slaughtered at the rate of tens of thousands a day on many days … we cannot rest as long as there is any sense among us that we are not doing all that might be done.”

Sadly no changes to refugee policy were made by the British Government and after William Temple died in 1944, the impetus for rescuing the Jews did not continue.

This item is part of the Pamphlets Collection, and it was catalogued as part of the Funk Cataloguing Projects at New College Library