Romania’s commemoration of the Holocaust

Since 2004, the Romanian victims of the Holocaust have been commemorated every year on October 9th.

România Internațional, 08.10.2015, 13:31

Romania has made significant
progress in terms of acknowledging and accepting responsibility for the
Holocaust, said president Klaus Iohannis in Bucharest on Thursday on the
National Day for the Celebration of the Victims of the Holocaust. It has been a
difficult process, but we have demonstrated that we have fully learned the
lessons of the past and we have chosen the path of vigilance, prevention and
fight against the seeds of hatred and discrimination, tolerating no offence
against the memory of the victims by denying or underestimating the Jewish
Holocaust, the Romanian president also said.

On an official visit to Bucharest,
the speaker of the Israeli Parliament Yuli-Yoel Edelstein spoke before the
Romanian Parliament on Wednesday. He called for tolerance and said Romanians
must learn the lessons of the past and make sure its mistakes will not be
repeated. He said Europe is starting to forget these things today, that
anti-Semitism is growing and that European Jews are more and more worried,
Edelstein also said. He appreciated the fact that Romania was a strong ally of
the Israeli state in the global fight against anti-Semitism.

The speaker of the Romanian
Parliament Valeriu Zgonea spoke about the considerable steps made by Romania to
combat anti-Semitism:

Romania was the first country in
south-eastern Europe to pass anti-discrimination laws. We can responsibly say
today that Romania is a model in the region and in Europe in terms of the
protection of minorities, and that we are a country who encourages diversity
and tolerance and who fights efficiently against xenophobia, anti-Semitism and
intolerance.

The National Day for the
Commemoration of the Victims of the Holocaust on October 9th was
established by law in 2004. Systematically ignored during the communist
dictatorship, the Holocaust was only recognised by the authorities in Bucharest
11 years ago, based on the conclusions of a special inquiry led by Nobel Peace
Prize laureate Ellie Wiesel into the World War Two deportations.

In Romania, October 9th
has a special meaning. On this date in 1941, the regime of Marshall Ion Antonescu,
an ally of Nazi Germany, started to deport the Jews in eastern Romania to
occupied Soviet territories, which resulted in the death of more than 250,000
Jews, according to statistics.