Parliament President Nikos Voutsis, in a special ceremony on Thursday evening, inaugurated the collection of exhibits making up the Permanent Greek Exhibition at the Memorial and Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, which was completed with finances provided by the Greek parliament, following a historic decision.
“It is not only moral, political and our historic duty to pay tribute to the thousands of victims. It is also a necessity for the country and Europe’s future. The struggle of memory against oblivion. The struggle of tolerance and co-existence is our historic duty against the criminal action and degradation of human life. We must fight together to promote the value of humanity,” underlined Voutsis in statements at the event.
Voutsis also conveyed the greetings of President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopios Pavlopoulos and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras “to this historic inauguration day,” and noted that “for us this effort that we made together, in conditions of economic crisis and difficulty for the country, was a self-evident choice. We delayed too long, 70 years is too long a time to create a Greek place to honour the thousands of Greek Jews that died in Auschwitz”.
The parliament president spoke of initiatives, already assumed by the Greek parliament, to preserve historic memory of this period, “which is an extremely valuable element for the country,” and linked this with the parliament’s recent decision to claim war reparations from Germany, noting that “the time chosen to do this was not coincidental”.
The event was attended by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and a Greek parliament delegation.
SOURCE: ANA-MPA
