Humanity, tolerance and respect are more important than ever for peaceful coexistence.
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE SKIN
Treating people as human beings, regardless of skin colour, religion or ethnicity, is especially true today. Hatred, racism, anti-Semitism must not be the last word in history. Mrs Friedländer concluded her speech by calling on people to be “vigilant, and not look away as we did then. On a day like today, we must stand together so that the memory of the Holocaust remains true and is not abused by anyone.”
The so-called "Jewish Star", she said, is “shamelessly used today by new enemies of democracy to style themselves in public – and in the middle of a democracy! - as victims. She warned that today the memory of the Holocaust is “politically abused, sometimes even ridiculed and trampled on”. What happened, happened - we can no longer change it. There is no Christian blood, no Jewish blood, no Muslim blood, there is only human blood. “You cannot love all people, but everyone deserves to be respected. “Be human! People did what they did because they did not recognise people as people,” she said. Mrs Friedländer explained how, after moving back to Berlin from New York at the age of 88, she now travels around Germany to meet pupils, whom she asks to become witnesses to the horrors of the Holocaust as she and her fellow survivors will not be able to for much longer. In her speech, 100-year old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer spoke about how her mother and brother were killed in Auschwitz, and how she herself was caught and deported to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt, where she witnessed indescribable suffering but survived. "We will honour the legacy of the Holocaust victims. United in diversity, we speak up against Holocaust deniers, against conspiracy myths, against disinformation and against violence of every kind that target and single out members of our communities”.
Opening the ceremony, EP President Roberta Metsola said: "On Holocaust Remembrance day, we remember crimes committed against humanity in the past, but we also remember the importance of speaking up, in the present. 77 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp on 27 January 1945, MEPs honoured the memory of victims of the Holocaust.
0 kommentar(er)
