Excellencies,
Mr. Chair of the ITF,
Dear friends and colleagues in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
It is a great honor to inaugurate this double photo exhibition in the context of the workshop “Never, ever be a bystander”.
This month, October, has a very special place in our collective memory. On 28th, we celebrate the anniversary of the Greek Struggle against the Axis that lasted until the very end of World War II. During the big war Greece suffered a lot not only in economic devastation but also in human losses, military and civil.
The Nazi occupation resulted in a decrease of about 10% of Greece’s population. Among them 67.000 Greek Jews, or 86% of the Jews of Greece, were perished in the death concentration camps.
Greece decided to establish, following a bilateral Agreement with Poland, a permanent exhibition of the Holocaust of Martyrs and Heroes who met such a heinous death in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, and the Ministry’s publication entitled “Greeks in Auschwitz-Birkenau” brought up new evidence, almost unknown to many of us: the Greek Revolt of 300 Jewish Greeks, some of them officers of the Greek Army who had previously fought at the Albanian Front.
Those heroes who chose death in exchange for a few moments of freedom died with dignity, singing our Greek National Anthem. It is one of the most glorious pages of Greek resistance during the Nazi occupation.
Today we pay tribute to the memory of these victims
We will always remember them.
The best way to honor their memory is to follow the “Never, ever be a bystander” rule. In the current challenging times it means zero tolerance against any form of racism or anti-Semitism. It also means mobilization of all of us against those dark forces that are exploiting the social and economic suffering, the uncertainties about the future; they are exploiting the shortcomings of the state to deal with illegal immigration in order to plant in the Greek society the disease of racism and anti-Semitism. The memory of Greeks in Auschwitz-Birkenau will never allow this to happen.
Thank you.
October 5, 2012