The SDLP has welcomed the decision of Sinn Féin's Mr Martin McGuinness and Mr Gerry Kelly to visit Auschwitz today.
At the same time, Mr Alban Maginness, the SDLP assembly member for North Belfast, urged the republican politicians to use their influence to help resolve the circumstances behind the murder of a leading Jewish businessman in Belfast over 24 years ago.
Sinn Féin's chief negotiator Mr McGuinness and the party's policing spokesman Mr Kelly are visiting the site of Auschwitz concentration camp today at the invitation of local members of the Jewish community who were involved in the organisation of the Holocaust Memorial Day in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast last year.
The SDLP's Mr Maginness said he was sure that the Sinn Féin politicians' visit to Auschwitz, Birkenau and Cracow would be "a life-changing and life-enhancing experience and a testimony to the futility of violence".
Mr Maginness said the visit was an opportune moment for Mr McGuinness and Mr Kelly and Belfast republicans to use their offices to assist in providing information about the February 1980 murder of Mr Leonard Kaitcer, a 50-year-old jewellery dealer who was married with two children.
He was abducted from his south Belfast home by gunmen who demanded a £1 million ransom.
However, the day after the abduction his body was found in the Glen Road area of west Belfast. No organisation admitted the murder, but unspecified republicans were blamed.
Mr Maginness said now was the time for republicans to help resolve why Mr Kaitcer was killed. He understood that the murder of Mr Kaitcer was "a significant factor in the decline of Belfast's once-thriving Jewish community, which contributed so much to this city, including a distinguished lord mayor, Sir Otto Jaffe".
Mr McGuinness said: "It is important that we go to other places to reflect on what happened in those places, so that we can ensure that those sorts of things never ever happen again."
