BREST, 28 January (BelTA) – Brest played host to an event to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, BelTA has learned.
On this day, the city's public gathers at the memorial erected to honor 34,000 Jewish ghetto prisoners. For Brest, half of which population was exterminated by the Nazis during the war, the Holocaust was an unprecedented tragedy in the millennial history.
“Brest is probably the only city in Europe where the entire Jewish population was exterminated. This situation cannot be imagined, although it took place. It seems to me that the tragedy of the Holocaust concerns absolutely everyone. I believe it is to be a moral indicator of humanity,” Regina Simonenko, chairperson of the Brest City Jewish Public Association Brisk, said as she opened the ceremony.
The heads of diplomatic missions of Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland and Ukraine came to pay tribute and remember innocent victims of the Holocaust. These countries, as well as Belarus, as well as the whole world, mark the Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January.
“We have gathered here because we remember, because we have a shared responsibility to the past and the future. The Holocaust took the lives of 6 million Jews, about 40% of whom lived in the former Soviet Union. For us it is a great tragedy, a special lesson that must not be forgotten. We must make every effort to preserve the true history,” said Russian Consul General Igor Konyakin.
Ukrainian Consul Anatoliy Didenko read excerpts from protocols published by the Security Service of Ukraine with eyewitness accounts of the events that took place in the Babi Yar on the outskirts of Kiev in 1941-1943. “Ukraine has canceled all TV and radio entertainment broadcasts today. Flowers are laid at Holocaust-related obelisks and memorials. As long as we remember those events, we will not allow them to be repeated,” the diplomat concluded.
Rabbi of Brest Chaim Rabinowitz performed a memorial prayer. The participants of the ceremony laid wreaths and flowers at the memorial.
