On January 27th, the United Nations General Assembly designated the International Day of Remembrance in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust and the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity and by the European Union as the European Day of Holocaust Remembrance . On this date the commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp (Poland) by the Soviet troops; A place that represents the horrors of persecution and extermination, where a million and a half Jews, Roma, Poles, Russians and prisoners of various nationalities were murdered.
Segovia, for the fourth consecutive year, will join this tribute. The Tourism and Culture areas of the City Council have organized on Thursday 27 January at 19:00 hours, an event in the Alhóndiga in which 6 candles will be lit in memory of the different groups most directly persecuted (Jews, disabled, Spanish Republicans , Gypsies, homosexuals …).
The act-homage will go together with the mayor, Clara Luquero, the councilors of Historical Heritage and Tourism, Claudia de Santos, and Culture, Marifé Santiago. Also attending will be Elías Cohen, Deputy Secretary of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain; Uriel Macias, press chief of the Israeli Embassy in Spain; Miguel de Lucas, General Director of Centro Sefarad-Israel and Rhoda Henelde Abecassi, survivor of the Holocaust.
Rhoda Henelde Abecasis was born in Warsaw in the days of the invasion of Poland by the German Nazi army. Licensed in English Literature and Romance, she lives in Madrid and currently, as main activity, translates Yiddish literature into Spanish. In her testimony she will relate how she was saved, but especially what became of her and of the other survivors at the end of the war.
After lighting the candles, Marifé Santiago will read a fragment of his novel ‘La canción de Ruth’ and will hear a locution of Leon Felipe putting voice to his poem ‘Auschwitch’.
Next, the sixth elementary students of the Fray Juan de la Cruz School, accompanied by their tutor Belén Calvo Sanz and music teacher, Elena Labrador Ruiz-Medrano, will offer ‘Flowers between wire of hawthorn’. A composition of photos of children’s drawings, most of them Terezín, with fragments of Jewish children’s diaries. The photos will be projected while the students dramatize the quotes from the allusive diaries and interpret four musical pieces with viola, guitar and dulzaina. They will recite two final poems and distribute flowers and bookmarks.
The act will end with a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.