81 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, the haunting legacy of the Shoah (Holocaust) is still felt across Europe and the world.

It's also a day we remember all those who were affected by the genocides in Darfur, Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia.

The effects of genocide are stark, as well as the lives lost as a direct consequence of the mass murder committed in these camps, there are long-term and lifelong effects left on those who were liberated from the camps.

Six million Jewish people, as well as millions of others including Gypsies, Traveller, Romani and LGBT people were amongst those killed in a genocide that we must never forget.

In the 2000s, medical records were examined of elderly patients admitted to a psychiatric hospital and the suicidality rate was evaluated between the patients who were survivors of Nazi Camps, versus those who weren’t. Shockingly, the attempted suicide rate was almost three times higher for the patient group made up of survivors of the Shoah*.

It was well documented through the work of William G. Niederland in the 60s, especially the effect on Shoah survivors and the tragic guilt they sometimes felt about surviving while families and friends may have perished in the Shoah. This lead to the popularised term 'Survivor's Guilt'.

However, in the aftermath of experiencing such trauma so many survivors showed an unprecedented level of resilience. A great example of this is Otto Frank, who returned to Amsterdam to find that every single of member of his family was killed but that he was sole survivor of the annex – as all other seven people hidden were murdered in concentration camps.

Despite, experiencing such significant loss, Otto then spent years fighting to have his daughter's diaries published, to ensure the experience of Jews living under Nazi occupation was properly documented and never lost. This resulted in the publication of one of the most renowned biographical memoirs of all time - Anne Frank's Diary: The Diary of a Young Girl in 1947.

It's critical that we never forget what happened, and all those who were murdered or suffered loss in the Shoah. The effects of genocide on the people targeted are enormous, and we all have a duty to make sure that never again means never again.

*https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16085786/