European Coalition for Israel

Brussels 1, February, 2010 – The 65th anniversary of the liberation of concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau was commemorated on Wednesday at various ceremonies and events in Krakow and in Brussels.

In his speech in Auschwitz President Jerzy Buzek of the European Parliament said “it is our duty to ensure remembrance and to educate.”
“- Those who lived through the hell of the camps never forget. The others - the younger generations - must not be allowed to forget.”

This call was also echoed in the Yehudi Menuhin hall in the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday evening where a record number of guests attended the Annual European Holocaust Memorial hosted both by the European Coalition for Israel and MEP Alf Svensson and with two Shoah survivors, Benjamin Silberberg and Henri Elberg sharing their testimonies from the Nazi death camps.

MEP Alf Svensson noted that ”anti-Semitism is again gaining ground in Europe though this is seldom mentioned publicly”. He admitted that ”there is still lot of work to be done, both on a national level and on an European level to prevent anti-Semitism from spreading further.”

In his speech ECI Director Tomas Sandell reminded the European legislators that “we need to remember but also learn.”
“- Today the Jewish people and the state of Israel are under threat from a fellow UN member state, which has repeatedly pledged to wipe Israel off the map. This we cannot and should not accept. Once again our European solidarity and commitment to save and protect lives will be tested”, he said

This year marked the 10the anniversary of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust which in its final declaration issued a call to all nations to commemorate the 27th of January as a Remembrance Day for the victims of the Holocaust. In 2005 this Remembrance Day was officially adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Since 2005 the event has been commemorated in the European Parliament in Brussels by the European Coalition for Israel in cooperation with members of the European Parliament and under the patronage of the president of the European Parliament, currently Jerzy Buzek from Poland.

President Buzek grew up only a few dozen kilometers away from the Auschwitz extermination camp. He was the first Prime Minister of Poland to take part in “the March of the Living” together with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1998.