STA, 27 January 2022 - The facade of the National Assembly will be lit up tonight in memory of the six million Jews who were killed by the Nazis and their supporters during Second World War as Slovenia joins observation of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Holocaust victims are being honoured with several events this week. The main ceremony was held in Lendava on Wednesday with President Borut Pahor calling in his keynote address for the preservation of peace, security, tolerance and coexistence.
In order to do this, both individuals and communities at home and in the international community need to promote the culture of remembrance, dialogue and peaceful resolution of disputes, the president added.
Pahor said that people should do everything in their power for reason to prevail, for things to calm down and for diplomacy to gain power so that problems around the world are solved and that the current and future generations are spared from conflict.
Before the ceremony, a delegation featuring Pahor and Israeli Ambassador Eyal Sela laid a wreath at the Jewish cemetery in Dolga Vas in the north-east of the country.
The president then visited Erika Fürst, a Jew from the Slovenian region of Prekmurje and a Holocaust survivor, with whom Pahor attended many remembrance ceremonies in recent years, and wished her a lot of health and vitality.
The National Assembly has joined the #WeRemember Campaign, initiated by World Jewish Congress in partnership with UNESCO, where people worldwide are asked to spread the message through various avenues, including social media.
The campaign, which has been running throughout the week, includes the illumination of notable monuments, coupled with the projection of moving messages in public places.
"It's our duty and the only promise for a better tomorrow to foster memory of the Holocaust victims and to cherish living together in peace with everyone, including those different from us," Speaker Igor Zorčič has said on the occasion.
"Only by preserving the memory of the past horrors and injustices and by fostering universal human values and human rights can we prevent such a tragedy from ever repeating. It is thus important and necessary to do what we can to support the efforts addressed by the #WeRemember campaign," Zorčič added.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is being observed since 2006 to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, in 1945.
From Slovenia more than 2,300 people were deported to the camp and more than 1,300 perished there. Of those deported, 350 were Jews and at least 78 were Roma.
The Slovenian Jewish community was all but annihilated during WWII, out of around 1,500 Jews in 1939 only some 200 Slovenian Jews survived the war.
