The victims of the Holocaust were remembered at the Memorial “Victims of Fascism” in Chisinau on January 27. The event involved representatives of the country’s administration, ambassadors, leaders of the Jewish community and of the Roma community, IPN reports.

Parliament Speaker Zinaida Grechanyi said the events that happened 75 years ago, when hundreds of thousands of people were killed by other people, represented the cruelty of the 20th century. “Our duty, of each citizen apart, is to keep in memory and to act against any form of intolerance, discrimination, racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia,” stated the official.

“Alongside the whole internationally community, we honor the victims of the Holocaust and remember all those who were exterminated in ghettoes and concentration camps by a regime based on interethnic hatred,” said adviser Cristina Mahu, who transmitted the message of Prime Minister Ion Chicu.

According to Minister of Education, Culture and Research Corneliu Popovici, the Holocaust was one of the darkest nights of mankind. “Millions of people were murdered with poison gas and burned in crematoriums alongside other millions of people who were subject to atrocities in concentration camps where life consisted of forced labor, famine, medical experiments, torture,” stated the minister.

Iulia Şeiman, who heads the Jewish community in Moldova, said, quoting Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, that forgetting, keeping silent, being indifferent to what is going on around are the greatest sins.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is an international memorial day on January 27 commemorating the tragedy of the Holocaust that occurred during the Second World War. It commemorates the genocide that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 6 million Jews and 11 million others, by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was liberated by the Red Army.

In 2016, Moldova’s Parliament adopted the Declaration of Acceptance of the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust Study, chaired by Elie Wiesel, instituting January 27 as the National Holocaust Memorial Day.