Europe Honors International Holocaust Remembrance Day

(Ha'aretz) Danna Harman - As countries across Europe prepare for International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday, Jan. 27, European Parliament President Martin Schulz, speaking at EU headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, said, "I feel that I have a very specific responsibility because what was decided at the so-called Wannsee Conference - the extermination of the Jewish people - was done in the name of the German people." "The German people of today is not guilty [of the Holocaust], but responsible for keeping the memory alive," he said. "For me, this means that whoever is representing the German nation has one important duty - to take into account our responsibility for the Jews in the world." French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement: "France is determined to fulfill the duty to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and to pass this knowledge on to new generations in France and throughout the world." British Labor Party leader and opposition head Ed Miliband, who has spoken publicly of his parents' escape from the Nazis, wrote in the Holocaust Educational Trust's Book of Commitment in the House of Commons: "Speak up, speak out is an essential message for us all as we remember the Holocaust. It reminds us that we must never forget the terrible genocide perpetrated against Jews. We owe it to all those who perished to remember and speak up against anti-Semitism. We must speak out against injustice and bigotry wherever we find it." The German magazine Stern reported Thursday that one in five young Germans has no idea that Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp.


2012-01-27 00:00:00

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