The International Holocaust Remembrance Day

January 27th is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This annual commemoration of the Holocaust was observed throughout the world, including Romania.

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România Internațional, 28.01.2015, 13:26

Only 70 years have passed since the last prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were released by the Soviet army, following fierce battles with the German forces. Known as the most sinister of all Nazi camps, Auschwitz was built in 1940 for extermination purposes and was used as such. According to statistics, between 1940 and 1945 over 1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed here. Of them, 95,000 were Romanian. Figures are not exact and the extent of the disaster is believed to be much larger.

Just like in previous years, the commemoration of the Nazi victims was held on January 27th across the globe, with the main event being staged at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in southern Poland, in the presence of the 300 camp survivors and a number of European leaders. The Holocaust Remembrance Day and the Day for the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity was marked in Romania with a series of events held in several cities.

In Bucharest, president Klaus Iohannis decorated three of the seven Romanian survivors. Iohannis promised, during the ceremony, that he would always defend the memory of the Holocaust victims. In his opinion, due to the yearly Holocaust commemoration in Romania for the past 10 years, the country, as a nation, has learned from the mistakes of the past and has understood that it needs to take action against discrimination, racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

Klaus Iohannis: “Keeping silent in front of horrors, discrimination, crimes and hate has made genocide possible. As President of this country I will always do my best to defend the memory of the Holocaust victims and honour the historical truth.”

One of the Holocaust survivors decorated by President Iohannis with the “Faithful Service” National Order in Rank of Knight, Susana Diamanstein, has said:

Susana Diamanstein: “This decoration is for all those who suffered and then returned home from this inferno. This decoration is, in fact, a consolation for everything we suffered.”

Prime Minister Victor Ponta said that mankind should never forget this dark moment in its history and that the respect for diversity, tolerance and freedom are the values able to prevent such horrors from happening again. Films on the Holocaust, valuable documents of that time and various Romanian productions are part of the first film festival devoted to the Holocaust, under way in Bucharest until Thursday. The Elie Wiesel Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania with the support of the US Embassy has staged the event.