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Jerusalem 10 May, 2010 – The European Coalition for Israel played a key role at the first official Victory day celebration to be held in Jerusalem on Sunday 9 May, the day marking the final defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. The day is celebrated as “victory day” around the world as well as “Europe-day” in the European Union. Newly elected ECI chairman Harald Eckert took part in the commemoration event at Yad Vashem, along with members of the Israeli Government and of the diplomatic corpus, and had the honor to lay down flowers by the monument of those Jews who lost their lives fighting for the freedom of Israel. ECI was the only NGO to be given this honor, alongside representatives of the diplomatic corpus from some 60 countries.
The European presence was further highlighted by a personal message by European parliament president Jerzy Buzek which was delivered to the meeting by ECI.
In his very personal message President Buzek shared about his experience of growing up as a young boy in the vicinity of the Auschwitz death camp in a country occupied by Nazi Germany.
“ -Holocaust and Auschwitz have remained powerful symbols for the European Union. The European Union must remain committed not only to remembrance and to drawing lessons from the past’s most tragic events but to making sure that they can never again be repeated anywhere,” he said.
“-The younger generations must not forget. The more time passes from those events, the more important our obligations for remembrance becomes,” he concluded his written message which was conveyed in Hebrew to the gathering.
His warm message was well received by the Israeli authorities and the Holocaust survivors represented at the event. According to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, “the citizens of Israel have never before received such warm words of support and encouragement from the highest level of the European Union.”
The ECI leaders Harald Eckert and Tomas Sandell later in the week met with the Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to discuss ways of strengthening the cooperation between ECI and the Israeli government in preserving the legacy of Holocaust remembrance in Europe and in fighting new forms of anti-Semitism. ECI has a long standing cooperation with the office of the President of the European parliament in commemorating the victims of the Holocaust and is now in the process of establishing similar links also to the government of Israel.
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