On the occasion of the annual Italian Chairmanship of the IHRA and in partnership with the Greek Delegation to the IHRA, the Municipality of Trikala, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece and the Jewish Museum of Greece, the Embassy of the Italian Republic in Athens organized a three-day event (November 9-11, 2018) to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust of the city of Trikala.,The Head of the Greek Delegation to the IHRA and Special Secretary for Religious and Cultural Diplomacy, Dr Efstathios Lianos Liantis, gave an address on the event.“And, behold, they are written in the lamentations”Italians are a naturally musical nation. So it is absolutely consistent that they chose the most musical city of Greece, Trikala, for this evening's event. A little further from here, the following verse was written “I hear in the dark your tired step crawling slowly and heavily", pointing out the tragedy and the despair of the exile procession of the Greek Jews towards the martyrdom. And these lyrics were sung after WW2 by one of the most beautiful and delicate voices of the rebetiko, the Jewish singer Stella Hasskil, who carried the ruinous fate of her people as lyrical expression.The mourning by the Rivers of Babylon passed through the Byzantine temple, the Gothic cathedrals, the Italian Opera with the Nabucco of Verdi and ended up as a folk song into the death camps on the lips of the Greek-Jews captives. They mourned for their sufferings and passions, which were heavier than those of their ancestors.I am talking about the song, because it is the deepest and most honest expression of a nation. When the Greeks-Jews in Auschwitz sang the song ‘’Black is the life we lead’’, they ascribed to the well-known kleftiko song the visage of tragedy and the eve of death, not as a threat but as a perceived, unavoidable reality. If every result is the aftereffect of previous logical processes, as Determinism dictates, Auschwitz is the example that overthrows it. It is the expression of the absurd connected with the criminal.Despite the unique nature of the Holocaust and its substance as one of the most documented events in human history, the memory of this overwhelmingly critical crime of the 20th century is increasingly being called into question. Complete Denial may remain a marginalized perspective, but other less direct forms of distortion have emerged. Falsification, devaluation and moral simulation often act as methods of spreading a disguised and subcutaneous anti-Semitism. In today’s environment of massive ignorance, apathy and / or passivity, these tendencies have been combined to create conditions increasingly akin to those of inter-war Europe. Moreover we have to look carefully into a recent research in which an outrageously high percentage of Greeks would not accept a Jew in their family environment.For these reasons, it is of great importance that our country is a full member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the world's largest organization, which brings together governmental agencies and experts to shape and promote education, memory and research of the Holocaust, to discuss Holocaust-related issues, including anti-semitism, and to support the commitments of the Stockholm Declaration of 2000.IHRA started in 1998 as a Task Force of International Cooperation for the education, research and remembrance of the Holocaust by the former Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson. Persson decided to establish an international organization to promote Holocaust education around the world and asked the former US President Bill Clinton and the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to participate in this effort. Persson also developed the idea of an international forum of governments interested in discussing educational actions about the Holocaust. This idea materialized in Stockholm from 27th to 29th January 2000. The forum was attended by representatives of 46 countries, including 23 Heads of State and 14 Deputy Prime Ministers or Ministers. The Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust was the result of that dialogue and constituted the ideological basis of the IHRA.The IHRA currently has 31 member-countries, two liaison-countries, nine observer-countries and seven permanent international partners, including the UN and UNESCO. Members are committed to the Stockholm Declaration and the implementation of national policies and programs to support Holocaust education, remembrance and research. The government of each member-country appoints a delegation to the IHRA conferences, composed of both government officials and national experts, achieving a productive relationship between the two levels.It is important to remember that the Holocaust did not start with executions. It began with rhetorics and proceeded to the violation of fundamental rights, culminating in genocide. That is why we feel so strongly the need to combat all forms of hate speech, including anti-Semitism.In closing, I would like to thank cordially all those who contribute to the Holocaust memorial events. First of all the Philhellene Ambassador of Italy, His Excellency Efisio Luigi Marras, and all the staff of the Italian Embassy in Athens. Then, the Mayor of Trikala, Mr. Dimitris Papastergiou, and the local authorities of the city, who took care of the whole framework of the organization with sensibility and interest. Of course, the great Jewish family of Athens, Thessaloniki and Trikala, who, under the leadership of President Mr. David Saltiel and the other heads of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, demonstrates at every opportunity of cooperation its great love for our homeland, which helps with altruism. Special thanks to the Jewish Museum of Greece, an exemplary museum with educational, cultural and technological activity, whose initiatives make it one of the most important museums of our country. Finally, on behalf of the Greek Delegation to the IHRA, I would like to thank all of you who came to this event tonight. Now, it’s time to speak and investigate, not only to honour the Holocaust Martyrs, but because we have to justify our humanity.
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