European Coalition for Israel

New President of the European Parliament

"- First responsibility is to defend the Jewish people"

Brussels, January 27th, 2012 – A full week of meetings commemorating the Wannsee Conference in Berlin and the victims of the Holocaust came to a climax in Brussels on Tuesday night, when the newly-elected President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, gave an official speech. In his speech, one of the first as a newly-elected president, he stated that ”his first obligation as President of the European Parliament is to defend the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” The statement came in his opening address at the 8th Annual Holocaust Remembrance Day in the European Parliament, co-organized by the European Coalition for Israel.

The new president spoke from personal experience when he said that ”Germans born after the war are not guilty of what happened 70 years ago, but nevertheless responsible for remembering and passing on the remembrance to the next generation”. In a private interview with ECI on Tuesday night he explained that ”anti-Semitism is still very much an issue that needs to be monitored in Europe”. Earlier in the week he had taken measures to ban Holocaust denial in the European Parliament, a decision that was criticised by some, but applauded by others.

Please watch our January video report from Brussels

On Tuesday 24 January the victims of the Holocaust were commemorated at a special event in the European Parliament in Brussels. The event was co-organized by the European Coalition for Israel.

70 years after the Wannsee Conference

- ECI launches new campaign to combat anti-Semitism

Berlin, January 17th, 2012 – On January 20th, 1942, fifteen Nazi leaders came together in Wannsee, outside Berlin, to coordinate the so-called ”final solution”. This was the attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million people. Seventy years on, Christians from Germany, Europe and other parts of the world, will meet in Berlin to decide how together they can step up the fight against Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism in our time.

-’ This may be our last chance to work with Holocaust survivors’, says ECI Chairman Harald Eckert, who is the initiator of the conference.  ’Three years from now, when we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, there will be very few survivors left among us. The next three years will therefore be of crucial importance when it comes to confronting those who try to deny the Holocaust with living witnesses of the Nazi genocide.’