The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed on January 27. This date marks the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were killed by the Nazi regime during World War II. To this day, the exact number of Jews and Romanies killed in the Holocaust is unknown. The figure that is most often pronounced by historians is over 6 million people, of whom 1.5 million were children, IPN reports.
The choice of this date is linked to the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland on January 27, 1945. According to Alexander Bilinkis, president of the Jewish Community of Moldova, this is one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. No less than 1.1 million people were destroyed here, one million of whom were Jews. “The tragedy must never happen again and for this we all have responsibility,” said Alexander Bilinkis.
The Holocaust Remembrance Week takes place in Chisinau on January 22-31. Thematic conferences, roundtable meetings, screenings of documentary films are held in educational institutions, libraries, museums and youth centers.
The authorities lit candles in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and observed a moment of silence. At the rally organized at the Monument to the Victims of Fascism in Chisinau, President Maia Sandu said that for Moldova the tragedy of the Jewish people, the Roma and all the others who suffered on this land during the Holocaust is and always will be a deep wound. “Each year we gather to commemorate together a human history chapter that is so dark that we can only shudder every time we remember the plight of millions of people who fell victim to the Holocaust,” stated President Sandu.
The Parliament of the Republic of Moldova in 2016 adopted a Declaration on the acceptance of the Final Report of the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust, chaired by Elie Wiesel, and January 27 was designated as the National Holocaust Remembrance Day.
