Sofia Marks Holocaust Remembrance Day with Education, Memory on Focus
Novinite Insider |Author: Angel Petrov | January 27, 2015, Tuesday // 20:02| viewsIsrael's Ambassador to Sofia Shaul Kamisa Raz (R) speaking during the Holocaust Remembrance Ceremonies. Photo by Angel Petrov
"It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."
With these words of Anne Frank, the young writer who found her death in Auschwitz in 1944, Vanya Kastreva, Deputy Minister of Education, launched the event with which Sofia became part of the ceremonies in memory of the Holocaust victims. The Holocaust Remembrance Day is celebrated every year on 27 January - the date when 70 years ago the Allies liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp of the Nazis.
Israel's Ambassador to Bulgaria H.E. Shaul Kamisa Raz, who spoke afterwards, stressed the importance of this anniversary marking the time elapsed after "one of the most horrific tragedies that have happened to humanity." He welcomed the decision to have it organized it in the Ministry of Education, "not only with those who make education policies, but also with those who perform them, because the source of the response to such terrible events is education."
"Imagine if these six million were still alive ..." he went on, referring to the extermination of nearly a third of all Jews during World War Two. "How much could these people give to science or medicine in terms of quality and diversity! How much would they give to the countries in which they would live as citizens who love their countries. Not to mention that the Jewish nation loves peace, is tolerant and wants to contribute to any place where it is."
"I want to tell you: that did not happen in Bulgaria, that did not happen in Denmark," - continued the ambassador, referring to the decision of Bulgaria and Denmark to save Jews during World War II, rather than allow Germans to deport them and imprison them in the death camps.
"Despite the threats from outside and inside the Bulgarian people did not agree with this and it brought it to an end... Then Bulgaria gave Jews the opportunity to go to Israel and thus it was a double privilege: the rescue and the opportunity to take active part in building the state of Israel.
The ambassador also warned of the danger of bringing the ghosts of the past, albeit with another face, back to life.
"Hostility persists, it is possible that the enemy only has changed in ethnicity. We see how things change in the world, how in other places there are attempts to commit genocide ... Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. There are still totalitarian regimes. There are people who claim that the Holocaust never existed. There are extremely religious organizations that are trying to convince the world that there is only one religion. These events contain the potential for emergence of a new Holocaust. We are all required to do everything possible to prevent it," His Excellency concluded.
He was followed by the secretary of Jewish organization Shalom, Yosif Melamed, who reminded to politicians, journalists, students and teachers who attended the event of the Nazi regime's attrocities against the Jews, but also against the peoples of Europe.
A sample lesson about the fate of the Jews during World War II was presented by Mr Angel Yanchev, director of a school in the city of Veliko Tarnovo and a participant in the first training workshop for teaching topics of the Holocaust in Yad Vashem. The lesson he has prepared involves working with documents and archives related to the history of the Holocaust and enabling students to interactively recreate history.
Students from several schools in Sofia shared his experience during a visit to Auschwitz. Each of the three girls who spoke repeated one sentence during her address: only who has seen the camp with their eyes can imagine what it is like there.
Deputy Education Minister Kastreva also made the closing speech, also unveiling an initiative of the Ministry of Education on the development of a poster for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - "facing the past in order to have a future".
Looking also at the future, we will finish with the words that Shalom's secretary recalled at the beginning - words of writer Elie Wiesel, a Nobel laureate who survived Auschwitz, but whose family found its death there. On receiving his prize in 1986, he told the Nobel committee:
"And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices... And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe."
It was precisely words, education and memory that Tuesday's event focused on, since the death camps were first built with words and it was only in a few years' time they turned into shacks and furnaces.
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