“Never again” – diplomats, politicians mark Holocaust Remembrance Day

January 27, Pozirk. “Never again something similar must happen,” said the German embassy in Belarus on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27.

On that day in 1945, the Red Army entered the Auschwitz concentration camp to discover the unthinkable scale of atrocities committed by the Nazis.

“Mountains of suitcases displayed in the Auschwitz museum tell the story of the countless number of people who died there,” the embassy said in a statement on Facebook. “These are silent witnesses of suffering and Germans’ guilt, reminding us of more than one million people killed in Auschwitz.”

Yesterday, German and Israeli diplomats took part in a commemoration event at the Beit Simcha Progressive Judaism Center in Minsk.

Today, Michael Kreidler, charge d’affaires of the US diplomatic mission in Belarus, paid tribute to the victims of Minsk Ghetto at the Hearth of the Broken Home memorial in the Belarusian capital.

The Belarusian foreign ministry said that more than 800,000 Belarusian Jews were among “millions of victims of genocide” in Belarus during the Second World War. The Nazis set up about 600 death camps, including more than 70 ghettoes in the country, it added.

The Holocaust “has shown forever what can power without borders and responsibility do,” opposition leader Śviatłana Cichanoŭskaja said in a statement on Telegram.

“Remembrance is not only about the past. It is a commitment to prevent hatred in the present and to fight antisemitism every day,” she said on X.

The Nazis and their allies murdered about 6 million Jews in 1941-1945. The total number of their victims is close to 10 million, taking into account other nationalities and social groups.