Hitler and his minions had plunged the world into years of terror and cruelty almost unimaginable, the Rev Dr William O'Neill, Presbyterian Church, Howth, said at the Ecumenical Service of Remembrance and Dedication at St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, yesterday.
The service commemorated all those who died in recent wars and Irish soldiers who died abroad on United Nations duty.
The service was attended by the President, Mrs McAleese, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr Joe Doyle, and members of the diplomatic corps.
Dr O'Neill, whose address dealt mainly with the second World War, said: "One recoils in horror at the comment of Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the final solution - the genocide of the Jews. He said on one occasion to Hoss, the commandant of the camp at Auschwitz: `The Jews are the sworn enemies of the German people and they must be eradicated. Every Jew that we can lay hands on is to be destroyed now during the war without exception. If we cannot now obliterate the biological basis of Jewry, then Jews will one day destroy the German people.'
"Six million Jews, it is has been reckoned, were killed in the Holocaust and many more millions of others were fiendishly put to death. There were more gruesome ways of killing which one hesitates to mention in polite society today."
They recalled these things today vividly and in some detail, not to kindle and inflame enmity; they did it rather to inform the young and remind some of the older of them. "We recall, in the hope of strengthening the resolve of young and old alike, to see that through support and use of international agencies, and in any other peaceful ways, we will see that this kind of thing never ever happens again."
They remembered today, and empathised with, those who experienced the loss of loved ones who died. They remembered also the disabled and those who suffered in any way because of the terrible wars.
The service was conducted by the Dean of St Patrick's, the Very Rev Dr Maurice Stewart.
The exhortation "They shall not grow old, as we are left grow old", was recited by Mr F.G.W.R. Medcalf, national vice-president of the Royal British Legion.
The first lesson was read by Maj Gen Vincent S. Savino. The second lesson was read by the British ambassador, Dame Veronica Sutherland.
The prayers were led by Father Patrick Culhane PP, Chapelizod, Dublin.
Dr O'Neill appealed for assistance for needy ex-service people through the purchase of a poppy of the Royal British Legion or through a contribution to one of the several agencies which exist in the Republic for the help of ex-service people, their spouses and dependants.
He said a serious shortfall existed in 1997 between what was raised by the legion and what was disbursed.