Iohannis: The authorities must make all necessary efforts to effectively combat anti-Semitic display

President Klaus Iohannis on Monday issued a National Holocaust Remembrance Day message in which he says that the authorities must make all the necessary efforts to prevent and effectively combat anti-Semitic and xenophobic display, including by penalising those who are responsible for such behaviours and actions.

"We are currently in a difficult context in our region, in Europe and in the world. In such times, populism has fertile ground to easily manipulate consciences, and extremism easily finds followers. Anti-Semitic and xenophobic attacks are intolerable and they must be strongly condemned and swiftly penalised! We must not forget that the Holocaust was also the consequence of the untimely propagation of hate speech, racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, against the background of economic, political and security crisis between the two world wars. The authorities must make all the necessary efforts to prevent and effectively combat anti-Semitic and xenophobic displays, including by penalising those who are responsible for such behaviours and actions. We must never allow Romania to be the place of hatred and humiliation of the human being!" Iohannis says in his message delivered by state adviser Catalina Galer to a ceremony at the Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest.

Iohannis also recalls the events that took place 82 years ago.

"Today, we pay tribute to all the victims of the Holocaust, their families and descendants, as well as those who risked their lives to save those who were subjected to unimaginable horrors during WWII. 82 years ago years, on October 9, the then Romanian authorities took a decision whose tragic repercussions will remain imprinted in history and in our collective memory forever. The deportation of Jews to Transnistria was the peak of hatred and intolerance on the part of the Romanian state and a part of the citizens. The attacks to which the Jewish communities and their places of worship were subjected, the persecutions and the barbaric crimes against the Jews are an indisputable testimony of the consequences that prejudice, discrimination and ignorance have, a harsh and shameful lesson, for us to understand that the only guarantee we have that such a tragedy will not be repeated is the knowledge of the past and the cultivation of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust."