The BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme reported this morning on yesterday’s commemorative service at Auschwitz. The survivors, who are pensioners, waited for hours in the cold for the service to begin whilst world leaders where whisked in at the last minute and given chairs on a heated stage.

This is exactly what is wrong with the world today and what was wrong with the world back in 1945. No person is more important than any other. No-one deserves to live whilst another deserves to die, no one deserves such unequal treatment. These people did not deserve it from the Nazi’s back in 1945 or from the modern fools who organised the ceremony yesterday in the mistaken belief that world leaders are a more important class of people. The scale may not be the same but the mistake is identical.

Capitalism is all about ego or sense of self-importance. I deserve to eat enough to make myself ill because I have earned it. I will watch my excess rot and watch you starve because it is mine, mine, mine. “You are animals we can treat as such becasue you are Jewish”, thought the Nazi’s mistakenly. “You are less important than these fluffed up politico’s”, thought yesterdays organisers, also mistakenly. Would it be wrong if “important” people should have to bear the cold, wait a little or be inconvenienced for an hour?

When such fundamentals are mistakenly confused we can see with great clarity what has to be done to turn the tide of human misery.