ME and Ophelia

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UK AND US HOLOCAUST CENTRES
Close in protest of crisis in Darfur

June 23 LONDON Reuters: Two Holocaust memorial centres, in Britain and the United States, will close for one hour on Thursday to highlight the humanitarian crisis in west Sudan's Darfur region.

"We hope to draw attention to the fact that what we are seeing in Darfur is a serious threat of genocide," a spokesman for the British centre told Reuters by telephone. "As organisations which spend every day of the year dealing with the issue of the Holocaust and carrying the moral authority of the survivors, we feel that ours is an important voice to be heard," he added.

The two centres, one in Washington and one near the central English city of Nottingham, commemorate the murder of millions of European Jews in World War Two. "If our voice was not heard this time when a serious threat of genocide is present, it would be to our shame," the British spokesman said.