Three quarters of a century have passed, and very few Holocaust survivors are still with us, but the memory of the worst genocide in European history still lives on.
“We have seen the danger in spreading false propaganda” said Martin Shultz, President of the European Parliament, “Even today we hear of a Parliament member in Budapest, for example, saying that the Jews are a danger to national security.”
He concluded his address by sending a powerful message, defining Antisemitism as a danger to imperative values such as democracy and human rights.
This year is the 70th anniversary of the infamous deportation of tens of thousands of Jews of the Greek city of Salonika into the German death camps in cattle cars. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who attended the event, spoke of this horrific episode that took place in his country and vowed – “Never Again.”
Over 400 people participated in the ceremony, organized by the European Jewish Congress in the European Parliament to commemorate the day in 1945 when Russian troops liberated Auschwitz. All the speakers delivered the same message – we must ensure that another Holocaust will never reoccur.
Some raised concerns regarding the resurgence of Antisemitism in Europe and in countries in the world, asking if the writing is on the wall once again. Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, warned of those seeking to change the heritage of the Holocaust: “We must never be complaisant to threats endangering our democracy; we must act before it is too late.” Dr. Kantor further referred to the events in Toulouse in 2012, when a terrorist committed three terror attacks, one of which was a shooting in front of a Jewish school, during which four people were murdered, solely because they were Jews – three of them were just children.
“For the past ten years we have been organizing the ceremony to commemorate the International Holocaust Memorial Day of the Holocaust,” said the event coordinator to Tazpit’s reporter. “One of the purposes of the event is to send out a very important educational message, and to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive, so something like this will never happen again. Moreover, there are still survivors alive today, and we wish to honor them” he stated.
