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| First Holocaust memorial day in Greece
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Simone Veil delivering her speech in Athens
Photo: Photo Studio Kominis
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The first Remembrance Day of Greek Jewish Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust was marked in the capital city of Athens on Monday with a somber service attended by president of Greece Carolos Papoulias.
Among the guests at the event, held at the Athens Music Hall, was Nikos Bistis, the politician who served as deputy interior minister during the 2002 Socialist government
Bistis was responsible for pushing through the Greek parliament the law that made 27 January an official day to honour Greek Jews that were exterminated during WWII.
Greek Jewry, today numbering around 5,000 people, had campaigned for years to have a day that would honor the Holocaust victims without success.
Bistis spoke to EJP about how he felt to see his efforts come into fruition. “I’m proud and emotional that this day was established during my tenure at the ministry,” he said.
“It was a debt long due by the Greek State to those victims. Lets just make sure we and the following generations never forget what happened.”
Resistance appreciated
French Auschwitz survivor Simone Veil gave an emotional keynote speech where she thanked Papoulias and the Greek Orthodox Church for its resistance work during WWII.
Addressing the president directly she said: “I know Mr. President how many memories you have from the World War in your heart, when still a very young man you chose to join the resistance. You are today the herald of these memories, and never forget to remind the young generations the valor of civic courage, of tolerance and respect for others.”
 It was a debt long due by the Greek State to those victims. Lets just make sure we and the following generations never forget what happened
Nikos Bistis | Paying tribute to the Church she noted that it was: “the efforts of Metropolite Grenadios and the official protest in March 1943 by the Archbishop of Athens Damaskinos that denounced to the Germans the deportation of the Jews with remarkable courage.”
Veil, a former president of the European Parliament, is the chairman of the Foundation for the memory of the Holocaust.
Speaking of her time in the camps she said: “I often remember in sorrow the masses that arrived in Auschwitz during 1944, mainly from Corfu, Athens, and Rhodes. They were selected within seconds on the platform of Auschwitz, only a few meters away from us. Most of them, principally the elderly and the children, were driven directly to the gas chambers.”
Tribute to the victims
Speeches were also given by deputy interior minister Kostas Skandalakis, the prefecture of Athens Ioannis Sgouros, President of the Central Board of Jewish Communities Moses Kostantinis and the President of the Athens Jewish Community Isaac Mordechai.
Kostantinis said, in a reference to Holocaust deniers, that as a single atrocious mass crime Holocaust cannot be compared to anything and cannot be included in any category of events.” “It can only be identified with the monstrosity of the Nazis,” he said.
Mordechai stressed that 27 January is “a tribute to the victims, the survivors, the liberators, the Righteous of the Nations.”
“We cannot let the distinction between the victims and the persecutors fade away. We can, we must forgive, but we are not allowed to forget,” he added.
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