Holocaust remembrance day of the Greek Jews

Dear Friends,

My professional obligations as Greece’s Ambassador to the United States keep me from joining you tonight in honoring the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, which decimated a thriving Jewish community that enriched Greece’s history and culture.

Greeks of my generation, children of those who lived through World War II, barely missed the horrors of the Nazi Occupation and the savagery of the Holocaust. However evidence of its brutality laid all around us; found in the sadness of our people; in the destruction of our towns; in the poverty of our fellow Greeks; in the black clad female forms that walked our streets towards our cemeteries.

Yet, our parents and grandparents who lived through, as well as Holocaust survivors themselves, were often reticent to talk about it; perhaps the pain of those memories was so horrific, that they felt it was best left alone.

In my mind, and in my heart’s eye, the horrors of the Holocaust came alive years later, when I, as a young man, when all Greece, read the memoirs by the father of contemporary Greek theatre, Iakovos Kampanelis, titled “Mauthausen,” as this is where he was imprisoned.

His account of events, and those of the survivors of all concentration camps, grab and strike the most painful chords of humanity and leave us stunned by the depth and breadth of evil that we, humans, are capable of; acts that one finds impossible to conceive.

Commemorations such as this, serve not only to pay due respect to the victims, survivors as well as those who risked their own lives to help their brothers and sisters; they also serve as a consistent and continuous reminder that we must be vigilant that such atrocities may never happen again.

I send my heartfelt thanks and congratulations to the American Friends of the Jewish Museum in Athens and the Greek General Consulate, for this initiative and I hope and urge that you will continue this noble effort.

Thank you

Vassilis Kaskarelis