Prague 17 April 2007 – The president of the Czech senate, Dr Premysl Sobotka, took a firm stand against Holocaust denial when he spook at the Holocaust Remembrance Day event in the garden of the Czech senate in the old town of Prague on Sunday. In his speech Dr Sobotka quoted a recent resolution from the Czech parliament which calls for all democracies to join forces in condemning the Holocaust denial conference in Iran which was called together to “study the historical validity of the Holocaust”.“-We can never bow down to hatred but need to speak up when anti-Semitism once more is threatening our societies”, he said.The Czech parliament was the first to publicly file a protest against the event but was shortly joined by other parliaments in Europe.

This call was repeated in the speech of founding director Tomas Sandell from the European Coalition for Israel who urged the audience not to repeat the mistakes of the past by remaining silent when the Jewish people are again under threat.
“- The lessons from history are clear, democrats need to react in time and work together to combat hate and intolerance”, Sandell said. “In the past it was said that “people did not know” about the threats to the Jewish people. Today there are no excuses. The threats from Teheran to wipe Israel off the map have been made loud and clear. In his speech he shared about the campaign “Learn from history” which aims at introducing Holocaust education in local churches in Europe by commemorating the United Nations Holocaust Remembrance day which falls on 27 January.

Professor Zuzana Ruzickova gave a personal account from her years in the Nazi death camps.“- When we first heard of the plans of Hitler to kill all Jews we were told that we were in no danger. Both Britain and France were on our side and our neighbors promised to stand up for us. British prime minister Chamberlain spoke about peace in our time. Little did we then know about what laid ahead of us. Soon she was taken to the Theresienstadt concentration camp outside of Prague. Still unsure of what was going on she wondered why people were screaming “gas” as they were taken in to the showers.

In the next few years she would be moved from one concentration camp to another.“- We were given new numbers but old clothes”, she remembers. Ruzickova survived the concentration camps but most of her family were left behind.

Israeli ambassador to the Czech republic, Arie Arazi warned about not taking present day threats of the destruction of Israel seriously.“- Hitler was not taken seriously. Let us not make the same mistake with theIranian leader Ahmadinejad", he warned.

National host Mojmir Kallus of the Czech branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, reminded the audience that Christians and Jews have not always been standing together.
“- There has been a lot of anti-Judaism within the Church which we as Christians have had to repent of in order to become real friends and partners of the Jewish people”, he said. " Many Christians have made this journey and today it isonly natural that we commemorate this day together," he concluded.