LAST Friday I attended the Holocaust Memorial event at Dudley College.

The Centre for Equality and Diversity did a great job organising the commemoration, which was attended by around 200 people, showing that our community - more than sixty years after these terrible events - wants to come together, not just to pay our respects to all who suffered at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust and in other more recent genocides; but to ensure that these horrendous crimes are never forgotten; and promise that we will - all of us - in whatever way we can, work to ensure that they are never repeated.

The highlight had to be the speech by Zigi Shipper who was born and brought up in Poland before being sent to the £odz ghetto in 1940. His mother had left when he was very young following the break-up of her marriage. Zigi never saw his father again and still does not know what happened to him.

In 1944, he was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eventually he was sent to Germany and sent on a death march, but was liberated by the British forces in 1945.

He was reunited with his mother after the war and moved to the UK where he eventually married, had children and started a business. Today he spends a huge amount of time telling students and young people about the horrors of the Holocaust.

It was a real privilege to listen to his story and to hear him give his testimony with such courage and dignity. I don't think any of the people who heard him speak could fail to see how kind and positive he is - despite everything he suffered.

Such strength and bravery should serve as an example to us all, but what struck me most was the humbling sense of duty and commitment, (which means that even today) he and Survivors like him display today by using their experience of these terrible events to create a better future for all of us.

It was great too to listen to Chelsea Lloyd and Sam Gibson, two students from Ellowes Hall, who travelled to Auschwitz With the Holocaust Educational Trust last year to see the horrors of the Holocaust for themselves.

It was fascinating to hear what their visit taught them and what they have done since, telling other pupils about the camp and the Holocaust.

The event provided an opportunity for us to pledge ourselves to confront the ugly poison of racial or religious prejudice and hatred wherever and whenever occurs, because whilst the Holocaust may have ended in the concentration camps and in the brutal murder of six million people, it started with racial abuse in the street and assault and intimidation, with bricks thrown through Jewish shop windows, the desecration of places of worship and restrictions on religious freedoms.

But whilst remembering the terrible events of the past shows us where hatred, bigotry and intolerance can lead, it can also teach us what is best about humanity because there were as well examples of heroism and bravery.

When men from Dudley went to fight - heroes to whom we owe such a huge debt - they were fighting not just for our liberty, but for the world's freedom too.

And look at Britain's response to the Holocaust. Where other countries rounded up their Jews and herded them onto trains to the gas chamber, Britain provided a haven for tens of thousands of Jewish refugees.

So Britain did not just win the war, Britain won the right of people around the world to live in liberty and in a democracy, safe from persecution because of their race, free to practise their religion.

And I want to mention one particular British hero - someone who the more I read about, the more inspired I am.

Known as the British Schindler, Frank Foley was an MI6 agent at the British Embassy in Berlin in the 1930s where he was working as a passport control officer. He provided papers to let Jewish people escape, he forged passports and even sheltered people in his own home.

At great personal risk, his bravery and compassion saved tens of thousands of lives But what really struck me when I learnt about him is that after returning from Germany he retired to Stourbridge, where he lived out his years in anonymity until his death in 1958.

Go down to Eveson Road where you will see that he lived in the most typical British house in the most typical British street you could imagine Fifty years after his death, Frank Foley does us another great service, because he shows that seemingly ordinary people can find the courage to do extraordinary things, when the easier, safer course would have been just to walk away.

And so this year - the fiftieth anniversary of his death, Stourbridge MP Lynda Waltho and I plan to launch an annual Frank Foley Memorial Lecture so that his heroism and the lessons he teaches us today will never be forgotten.

And the author of his biography, Michael Smith, the man who brought Foley to public attention has agreed to come to Dudley to give the first lecture.

I'll write more about our plans for this event in the coming weeks, but if youd like me to let you have more details, email me at austini@parliament.uk.

In the meantime, let's use this week and the annual memorial to the Holocaust to rededicate ourselves to the timeless values of democracy, equality, freedom, fairness and tolerance and let us pledge again to fight prejudice and hatred wherever it is found, because there could be no better tribute than that to the memory of those that perished sixty years ago.