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Riga has learnt Lessons from Holocaust


From July 4 to July 5 the international conference �The Holocaust: Remembrance and Lessons� will be held in Riga. The conference was organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Republic of Latvia, the American Jewish committee and the Latvian Transatlantic Organization (LATO). NovoNews was informed by this from the organizers of the conference.

On the first day of the conference on July 4 (Latvia�s National Holocaust Memorial Day) the annual mourning meeting at the memorial place by the destroyed synagogue took place to commemorate victims of the genocide. Furthermore, participants of this activity visited the Riga ghetto and Rumbula forest, the Jewish community house and the museum and documentation center �Jews in Latvia�.

The second day started with an opening by Latvia�s President Vaira-Vike Freiberga. Lord Janner of Braunstone, chairman of the Society who studies the Holocaust, and Yehuda Bauer, Academic Adviser at the International Centre for Holocaust Studies (Yad Vashem, Israel) also gave speeches.

Dr. Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Russian Jewish Congress and its vice-president, Salomon Buchenholz, held salutatory speeches on behalf of the Board of Governors of the European Jewish Congress.

�As soon as we start talking about the most horrible crime in human history, the devil starts to introduce the most dangerous myth in the public consciousness: there was no Holocaust in general. There were no pogroms; there was no Night of Broken Glass; there was no Babi Yar; there was no Auschwitz. Therefore we today have to be as clear and honest and precise as possible, when we speak about the greatest tragedy in history�, declared Buchenholz quoting the chairman of the Board of Governors of the Russian Jewish Congress, Dr. Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor.

During the opening session, lecturers noted the importance of preserving the historically authentic knowledge and memories of the tragedy of the Holocaust. Therefore a special emphasis has been placed on the moral obligation explaining to youths the importance of giving future generations an understanding about the consequences of the Holocaust and a feeling of responsibility in the face of mankind.

The same intensive attention to this problem was given in a speech devoted to the conference by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia. �By the means of this conference, we want to address problems regarding the preservation of the memory of the unprecedented tragedy of the Holocaust�, noted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. �We would like to discuss the culture of preservation of memory in the western countries, where the society unites representatives of various cultures�.

Reference Holocaust is referring to the state-led systematic persecution and destruction of various groups of the population due to their ethnic, national or religious identity, their sexual orientation or genetic character, that was considered harmful according to the racial theories of the Nazis from 1933 to 1945.

Source: NovoNews
Issued by: Moscow Bureau of Human Rights



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