Speaking on ITV's Good Morning Britain, he said "We're not in a world where you can just say I'm in a little bubble, I can just forget about everyone else."
Six million Jews were killed between 1941 and 1945.
The stats
- Of 2,000, 300 said they'd been victim of a hate crime
- 61% said no one intervened to help
- Verbal abuse was the most common form of hate crime
Jane Clements, Director of the Council of Christian and Jews commented that people have stayed silent in the past: "There are lots of reasons why people, for example, during the Holocaust, did stand by and one of them was fear of actual physical harm and death to their own families, a pretty huge thing, but these days, we're not in that situation and the law is on our side."
She was speaking after new research showed a quarter of people in the UK have witnessed hate crime in the last year.
The poll, carried out to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day - which is today - showed 27% of those questioned had seen a form of hate crime, with a fifth witnessing abuse based on religion and 25% based on race or ethnicity.
Of the 2,007 people asked, 440 said they had witnessed hate crime and regretted not challenging it.
Standard Bearers from the British Legion during a Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration event at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Jane Clements told Premier's News Hour that it is important to step up: "It can be a rather unpleasant situation and most people just say 'well, I'll just see how far it goes', 'well as long as it doesn't go any further' and people are understandably nervous.
"And wonderfully in this country we have the law on our side and it's really important that people do take the bull by the horns."
Listen to Premier's Hannah Tooley speak to Jane Clements here:
Listen to Premier's Hannah Tooley speak to Baroness Caroline Cox here:
