29/01/2025 Session
At a ceremony to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, which took place in Strasbourg as part of the winter session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau – President of the Yad Vashem Memorial, former Chief Rabbi of Israel, and the youngest survivor of Buchenwald – recalled the vivid memories of his deportation as a child, the loss of his family, and the conditions of his liberation, while denouncing the persistence of antisemitism. “We want our children to know freedom, to know peace and never a war. Never again. Only peace, friendship and love,” he said.
“The Holocaust, a devastating assault on humanity and the human spirit that challenges our understanding, continues to demand reflection on how such darkness could have emerged,” said PACE President Theodoros Rousopoulos at the opening of the event. “This incomprehension should not deter us from fulfilling our duty to remember and to act, and our Assembly must lead by example,” he added, underlining the need to support and develop remembrance sites and to mainstream their history into educational curricula.
“On this day, we stand against the surge in antisemitism, we remember that the crimes of the Shoah were committed in Europe, by Europeans, and we commit to our young people and their future,” stressed Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe. He emphasised the importance of “knowing what happened in all the Nazi concentration and extermination camps” and of acting so that it never happens again. “When we allow impunity to go unpunished, we empower the enemies of democracy.”
During the ceremony – which was preceded by a plenary debate on “Multiperspectivity in remembrance and history education for democratic citizenship” – the leaders of the Assembly’s political groups, as well as representatives of the Roma and LGBTIQ+ communities, took the floor, and a question-and-answer session was held with a group of secondary school pupils.
The ceremony was followed by a moment of reflection, during which wreaths paying tribute to the victims of the Holocaust were laid in front of the commemorative stele on the forecourt of the Palais de l'Europe, and a minute of silence was observed.
