Przemysław Czarnek, Minister of Education and Science participated in the celebration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Lublin.

In Poland in many places in Auschwitz-Birkenau through Majdanek, Bełżec, Sobibór and many other places, we commemorate the victims of what the Germans did to the world at that time. We commemorate with our state money. All this so as not to stop telling the world what hatred between peoples leads to, what racial hatred leads to, what Nazism leads to – Black noticed it.

According to him, for many years it seemed that this commemoration and remembrance was effective. But unfortunately it fails, because today we have a similar thing – Holocaust in Ukraine. We are dealing with a genocide against the Ukrainian nation, perpetrated by the Russians, by Putin. Therefore, we must not stop our efforts and continue to tell people: no more war, no more hatred between peoples, no more criminal totalitarian regimes – communism, Nazism, but also this Russian peace that they want from us today – more or less like the Communists or the Nazis – Russian cooks – assessed the head of MEiN.

Conversations with Israel

He assured that he was in constant contact with Israeli Ambassador to Poland. During these days, I will also meet with the Minister of Education of Israel in order to renew Polish-Israeli relations, to renew contacts between Polish and Israeli youth, to show Poland in the light that it must be – with its beautiful culture, its beautiful history, beautiful centuries of coexistence of these nations here in Poland, but also to show young people – both Polish and Israeli – what totalitarianisms like German Nazism lead to – explained Minister Czarnek.

“Such a story should never happen”

Director of the Lublin branch of the Institute of National Remembrance Robert Derewend refers to the exhibition PIN “The Holocaust of the Jews of Europe”, which is presented near the monument to the victims of the Lublin ghetto. This story should never have happened. The Germans also tried to unite or organize the Poles against the Jewish people – they failed. They wanted to share the responsibility for this Holocaust already during the Second World War – Derewend pointed out.

He pointed out that nowadays there are attempts to blur this image, somehow trying to blame the Poles, supposed to participate, accepting what happened in WWII. As PIN we keep the memory. We owe it to the victims of the Holocaust, as well as to the Poles who were persecuted by the Germans and which, at least in part, helped the Jewish community” – underlined the director of the Institute of National Remembrance in Lublin.

Participants of the ceremony in Lublin laid flowers and lit candles at the monument to the victims of the Lublin ghetto. International Holocaust Remembrance Day was established by the United Nations to honor the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Germans during World War II. Its date was set for January 27, the anniversary of the occupation by the Red Army in 1945 of the German concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Author: Gabriel Bogaczyk