Britain Announces new Holocaust Memorial

Britain is to build a new Holocaust memorial in central London to which the government will contribute £50 million (67 million euros, $75 million), ministers said Tuesday. 

The memorial will be built along with an education center in a bid to ensure that the lessons of World War II's mass killing of Jews by the Nazis are never forgotten.

The announcement comes on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland, marked around the world each year as Holocaust Memorial Day.

There is already a Holocaust memorial in London's Hyde Park consisting of two boulders lying in a bed of gravel inscribed with a quotation from the Book of Lamentations.

But it is thought the new memorial will be on a larger scale.

Prime Minister David Cameron attended a Holocaust commemoration in London on Tuesday and said it was particularly important to keep remembering what happened as the last survivors reach the end of their lives.

"We stand in remembrance of those who were murdered in the darkest hour of human history, we stand in admiration of what our Holocaust survivors have given to our country and we stand united in our resolve to fight prejudice and discrimination in all its forms," Cameron said.

"I will ensure that we will keep Britain's promise to remember: today, tomorrow and for every generation to come."

The announcement was welcomed by Britain's Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who said: "Only through learning about the darkest period in human history can we ensure it will not be repeated."

There are more than 260,000 people in England and Wales who identify themselves as Jews, according to the most recent census conducted in 2011.

Police patrols in areas with high Jewish populations have been stepped up in the wake of Islamist attacks in Paris, including on a kosher supermarket, which killed 17 people.