Statement of the Romanian Government marking the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, 60 years ago

These days, the international community commemorates 60 years since the Auschwitz camp was liberated, a place with sad significance for the history of the Jewish people. On January 24th, a special session of the UN General Assembly took place, dedicated to this moment, a series of countries organized commemoration acts and on January 27th, a series of events will be organized in Poland .

The Romanian Government brings homage to all the dead persons in World War II, only because they were Jewish.

This event represents an occasion for remembering the horrors and crimes our Jewish kin went through, as well as for reaffirming the commitment of the states from the democratic community to fighting with all their means against xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

Our country, which is part of this community, shares the respect for humans and for human rights, understood that reconciliation, with all the dark aspects of its history, represents the ground an enlightened future may be built on for its young people, for the generations called to make a better like for each Romanian.

The Romanian Government understands the importance of its mission of acting firmly for fighting discrimination based on ethnical and religious differences. In this respect, we consider to be extremely important the respect and firm implementation of the legislation that forbids the xenophobic or anti-Semite manifestations.

At the same time, the educational area bears maximum importance, as the development of programs for Holocaust research, for teaching in schools facts related to this phenomena and training teachers to help the Romanian pupils to know the history of our Jewish co-nationals. We consider the investment into education to be an investment into our future. In this sense, we rely on the support of the experienced states, especially in the framework created by our country's accession as full member of the International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, as well as of all the organizations, foundations, academic centers that may help us start activities that have as objective promoting the truth about the Jews' destiny in WW II. We will monitor the implementation of the recommendations of the International Historians Commission for Holocaust Study.

These decisions are part of a group of measures that demonstrates the efforts of the Romanian Government for raising the awareness among today's generations that a terrible phenomenon such as the Holocaust should not repeat.

The Holocaust commemoration in Romania is not only related to the National Holocaust Day, on October 9th (the start of the Romanian Jews' deportation in 1942 to Transnistria and Bucovina), but it is a continuous process that reminds us that we should permanently fight to be better, more tolerant, more honest.