Senate President Mircea Abrudean said on Monday that the Holocaust represented a planned extermination that killed around 6 million Jews, but also struck other groups persecuted by the Nazi regime and its allies.
"The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day of collective memory and responsibility for the past, the present and especially the future. The Holocaust meant a planned extermination that killed around 6 million Jews, but also affected other groups persecuted by the Nazi regime and its allies. Figures explain the scale, however they do not speak about personal loss. Every person who died had a family, plans, a home, a birthday, a word of love left unspoken, an embrace never given. When we speak about the Holocaust, we speak about interrupted lives, about children who never became adults, about parents who never saw their children again, people who were humiliated, starved, deported and killed," Abrudean said at the ceremony marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the memory of the victims of the anti-Jewish Legionary Pogrom in Bucharest, organised by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania.
According to him, "today, when we are living through difficult times and tensions exist across the entire world, we must not allow evil to grow or make room for lies."
"Our country has introduced legal instruments against fascist, racist or xenophobic organisations and symbols, and sanctions the promotion of the cult of persons guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. These measures matter, but they do not replace our everyday actions. Unfortunately, over the past year, the Romanian society has witnessed the rise of hate speech and extremist manifestations in the public space. We are seeing online a proliferation of hateful discourse and conspiracy theories, as well as disinformation, disguised as possible solutions to a range of complex societal problems. In this context, the commemorative day of 27 January is a good opportunity to reflect on the measures that must be taken in order to combat these phenomena," the Senate President underscored.
He added that "the presence and proliferation of antisemitism, xenophobia, radicalisation and hate speech, both in the physical and virtual space, at international and European level, highlight the need to continue adopting firm measures to prevent and combat these phenomena, given the risk of these negative trends being transferred into Romanian society and the need to protect Romania's constitutional values."
"In the current global context, there is a risk that, in the medium and long term, radicalisation could also become a growing phenomenon in Romania, taking into account Romanian citizens' exposure to various extremist ideologies. The memory of the Holocaust calls for practical action. It begins with how we react to a comment, it begins with how we correct a lie shared online. (...) I ask and invite you to a simple personal commitment: not to forget, not to relativise and not to remain silent when we observe discrimination. It is important to develop an institutional culture sensitive to the dangers posed by antisemitism, xenophobia, racism, radicalisation and hate speech and to the need to combat them, as well as to educate society, including at the level of public discourse and the media regarding these phenomena and the various forms they can take. The memory of the victims is not only about the past, it is about how we choose to live today, how we educate our children, how we treat our neighbours and how we react when we see someone trying to turn a person into a target," Senate President Abrudean conveyed.
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