Seventy-eight years have passed since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and Holocaust Memorial Day - celebrated on 27 January - is not a ritual commemoration. As the generation of survivors and witnesses of the Shoah is disappearing, Holocaust Remembrance Day calls on everyone to take up their legacy. It calls on institutions to be more vigilant to counter the spread of anti-Semitic and racist prejudices, intolerant slogans and attitudes in public space, accompanied by discrimination and social exclusion of minorities.
Reflection on the Shoah, prepared in the 20th century by decades of anti-Semitism and preaching of racial hatred, was crucial for peace and reconciliation in Europe after the Second World War. Yet the memory of the abyss of Auschwitz still constitutes a fundamental warning for the future of our continent, even as war has tragically returned to European soil.
