‘Education and remembrance of the Holocaust, our shared responsibility’ is the motto under which this year is celebrated the Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, an event that can not be overlooked in Segovia, because “Segovia is a city pierced by Jewish history, “says the mayor, Clara Luquero, in the central act of the tribute to the victims, among which there were not only Jews, he recalls, but there were also residents of the city and the province.
“Preserving the memory of the Shoa – a term that identifies the genocide ordered by the dictator Adolf Hitler – is an ethical imperative,” reiterates Uriel Macías, press officer of the Israeli Embassy in Spain; who regrets that “after the Holocaust nothing can be the same as before, because the extermination of a million and a half children is the clearest proof of how far human evil can go”.
An evil that not only the Jews suffered, but “all humanity was a victim of the Holocaust,” says Miguel de Lucas, general director of the Center Sefarad-Israel, so keep the memory alive to prevent something like this from happening again ” It is everyone’s responsibility. “
SURVIVOR And what better way to preserve that memory than to listen to one of the survivors of Nazi injustice. Zvi Szlamovicz is a Belgian Jew born in the middle of World War II. His mother and aunt died in a gas chamber in the Mauthausen concentration camp; his father was imprisoned, but he survived several months in prison until Belgium was released; his sister Raquel was hidden in a convent and had to change his name to Maria Teresa not to be deported.
And he, being only a baby, was welcomed by a Belgian couple who belonged to the resistance and saw in the rescue of the little Jews a way to fight against the fascism that prevailed in Europe. “This saved 3,000 Jewish children during the Holocaust”, thanks to the collaboration of 150,000 people opposed to Nazism and with the courage to fight against it.
His story, which he knows thanks to the story of his father, his sister and, above all, his “godparents”, as he calls the parents who welcomed him, has to be told and listened to, like that of the few remaining survivors, because in his words is the key so that history does not repeat itself.
After the heart-rending story of Szlamovicz, the six candles of the Remembrance were ignited – one by the six million Jews murdered; the second for the million and a half children who killed the Nazis; the third for the righteous who helped the Jews to save themselves; the fourth in memory of the other groups that suffered Nazi barbarism, such as gypsies, the disabled, homosexuals …; the fifth by the surviving Jews who re-established their lives in Israel and the diasporas; and the sixth for the preservation of memory. With the candles and lighting the room, the Councilor for Culture, Marifé Santiago, read a fragment of his book ‘We look at the piety from the wire,’ and heard ‘Gelem Gelem’, the gypsy international anthem.
Then, 6th grade students of the Fray Juan de la Cruz school dramatized quotes from the diary of Anne Frank and performed two pieces of music. And to finish the act, students of 2nd, 3rd, 4th of ESO and 1st of Baccalaureate of the IES Giner de los Ríos performed the dramatization of poetic, descriptive and dramatic texts, adding to the wish of Theodor W. Adorno: that Auschwitz did not repeat