“The Holocaust left an indelible imprint on the history of our nation. The Holocaust does not mean only Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Babiar or Treblinka. The Holocaust means also over 100,000 Bessarabian and Romanian Jews, over 150,000 Ukrainian Jews and more than 11,000 Romanies who died or went disappeared during World War II, in concentration camps in Transnistria,” President Maia Sandu stated in a requiem meeting to remember the victims of the Holocaust that took place in Chisinau today, IPN reports.
“It means also over 11,000 Jews who were held in the ghetto in Chisinau and the shooting, during only several months of 1941, of thousands of Jews who until then lived peacefully alongside Moldovans in Edineț, Călărași, Lipcani or Florești. Without trial, without the right to defense. Older people, children, ordinary people of different, simple professions free from ideologies, such as tailors, traders, pretzel makers or druggists.
“The biggest evil starts not from a bullet or a punch, but from the word that generates hatred. Hatred makes the pulling of the trigger possible. It is now more important, in the epoch of hybrid wars, of the avalanche of disinformation, fake news and lies, to discover and to trenchantly condemn any hate speech, discrimination, violence or blackmail against people, regardless of ethnicity, origin, religion or political believes,” said President Sandu.
For her part, Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița said that it is hard to imagine the world in which the people killed by state machineries in the 1930s-1940s lived, started families and left successors. It would have been another world, with more scientific discoveries, with more ideas and works of art, with a more developed economy. The loss of this human potential was an enormous tragedy for everyone,” stated the Premier, noting the Holocaust shows into what monster a totalitarian state driven by hatred can turn. “To avoid the repeat of such crimes, we daily struggle for democracy, for the observance of the basic human rights, for transparency and accountability of state institutions, for peace.”
Alexandr Bilinkis, director of the Jewish Community of the Republic of Moldova, noted that monuments in memory of the Holocaust are to be unveiled this year in Orhei and in a forest in Cosăuți village of Soroca district.
Vasile Drangoi, head of the Coaliton “Voice of the Roma” of the Republic of Moldova, said the Nazis were people without heart and soul.
The Holocaust is a term used to describe the killing of about 6 million Jews of all ages, mostly from Europe, during World War II as part of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question that was a Nazi plan for the genocide of Jews. Among the victims were 1.5 million children.
