January 27, 2024, Holocaust Remembrance Day - We remember our own people, the 6 million Jews of Europe who were displaced and brutally murdered. We remember losses and pain. We reflect on the fading wound that never healed and feel responsible for preserving the Memory. We remember the 67.000 Greek Jews, relatives, friends and neighbors from all over Greece who were exterminated in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau and the other German death camps. We remember our fellow human beings and fellow citizens, anonymous and named Righteous Among the Nations, who are the light of humanity, who at the risk of their lives saved our co-religionists.
Today, 79 years later, the WHY still remains unanswered and deepens the trauma. The "Final Solution" was implemented by the Nazis and their collaborators with the motivation of hatred, the weapon of blind fanaticism and the ally of the world's indifference. The Holocaust was an unprecedented genocide. In terms of the non-existent cause, the capture, the satanic implementation, the sophisticated methods of mass executions, the industrial way of processing the corpses and the feedback of the Nazi Germany war machine from the victims themselves and even from their remains, the "Final Solution » take humanity away from man! The Holocaust, the 'ultimate evil' did not start at Auschwitz - it ended at Auschwitz. For all these reasons the genocide of Europe's 6.000.000 Jews has the tragic privilege of uniqueness.
79 years later that the Allied forces revealed the horrors of Auschwitz and other extermination camps, we, the survivors of the horrors and their descendants, on October 7, 2023, witnessed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust with the cold-blooded murder of 1.200 people - infants, children, men and women - of all ages and the taking of 250 hostages, in the State of Israel, in an operation of a new genocide against the Jewish people.
Today more than ever, the Jewish people, both in the State of Israel and in the Diaspora, stand against terrorism and anti-Semitism. We deplore any attempt to demonize the Jewish state and delegitimize its right to exist as yet another form of modern anti-Semitism, and look forward to achieving a sustainable peace that will bring prosperity to all the peoples of the region.
Today more than ever we fulfill our duty to future generations and strengthen education and knowledge as the only answer to the hatred and bigotry that continue to threaten humanity.
So that the darkness of oblivion does not prevail over the light of memory and hope.
Athens, 26 January 2024
Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece
