Obama: It is our duty to prevent another Holocaust

(AP).President Barack Obama paid tribute Thursday to the memory of Jews murdered in the Holocaust and said it is the duty of the living all over the world to end such atrocities forever.

Speaking at a Holocaust Days of Remembrance ceremony at the U.S. Capitol, Obama warned against what he called the dangers of silence.

"Every day," he said, "people should resist the urge to turn away when scenes of horror unfold across the world and fight the impulse to turn the channel when we see images that disturb us or wrap ourselves in the false comfort that others' sufferings are not our own."

The president also urged people to make a habit of empathy, "to recognize ourselves in each other."

Obama noted that the risk of genocide has not been eliminated since about 6 million Jews were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. Many were gassed in death camps, while others were killed en masse in other ways, including shooting and starvation.

"We've seen it, in this century, in the mass graves and the ashes of villages burned to the ground and children used as soldiers and rape used as a weapon of war," he said.