The President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou participated in the commemorative march, from Eleftherias Square to the old Thessaloniki train station, 80 years after the departure of the first train carrying Jews to Auschwitz
“With the ‘march of memory’ we honor the victims of Nazism, fascism, anti-Semitism, we participate in the mourning of their descendants, we listen to the revealing speech of the few survivors, we add our voice to that of thousands of citizens who travel the the same path, from the ghettos to the railway station, putting into practice the universal motto NEVER AGAIN”, said the President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou, who participated in the Remembrance March, from Eleftherias Square to the old railway station, 80 years the departure of the first train with Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
“We are here, after the Tempe tragedy, which the entire Greek society lives with feelings of deep destruction, to keep alive the memory of one of the most shameful and painful events of the 20th century,” Ms. Sakellaropoulou said initially in her speech.
And he continued: “Starting from Eleftheria Square, a place of humiliation and inhuman treatment of Greek Jews, we walked in silence to the old railway station, from where on March 15, 1943 the first train left for the Auschwitz extermination camp. Birkenau.
It was just one of many trains that gradually and under miserable conditions, in animal carriages, transported approximately 46,000 of our fellow Jews to Nazi terror camps. Of these, fewer than 2,000 returned to the beloved “Jerusalem of the Balkans,” where their Sephardic ancestors found a welcoming haven in the 15th century. Commemorative events like today’s are necessary to show, even belatedly, the real facts of the arrest, displacement and finally extermination of our Jewish brothers. Atrocious events that sealed the life of the city and violently changed its rich multicultural identity.
And it is particularly important that, especially in recent years, Thessaloniki has acknowledged its share of responsibility and explicitly condemned the mistakes of the past, in an effort to heal the historical wound.”
source: iefi merida
