Speaker Orban: The Iasi Pogrom is the bitter lesson of a history not to be forgotten

Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Ludovic Orban said on Wednesday that the Iasi Pogrom is the bitter lesson of a history that, although it moves away from us, must not be forgotten. The Romanian Parliament on Wednesday commemorated for the first time ever the victims of the June 1941 Iasi Pogrom in a solemn session as part of a joint plenary sitting. "On such a day, I believe that we must put our humanity, compassion, heart and mind together to understand the meaning of the commemoration we are celebrating today. I am talking about humanity and the heart because beyond the terrible dimension of numbers, over 14,000 victims, beyond the cynicism of orders and the cruelty of deeds, lies the painful history of those who did not survive, and also of those who lived a life remembering the ordeal to which they were subjected without guilt by the very state that would have had to defend them," Orban told the solemn session. He added that the question we must always carry with us is "how a democratic society can collapse into the abyss of inhumanity." "Only by asking ourselves this question can we avoid going back in time and repeating such crimes. Today, we are talking in the Romanian Parliament, inside the central institution of our democracy, about the Iasi Pogrom. We have to ask ourselves that question, because we have an essential responsibility in preventing any such slippage. The Iasi Pogrom also marked a milestone on the path to moral bankruptcy of those years, a society that allowed the Jewish population to become the target of systematic persecution, exclusion, violence and daily humiliation, and ultimately genocide. It is the bitter lesson of a history that, although it moves away from us, must not be forgotten. On the contrary, it is our duty to preserve and pass on the vivid memory of this tragic episode because it is a warning from the past which importance we measure better today, when we see the political and moral havoc generated by intolerance, racism, xenophobia, the massive spread via the internet of hatred fueled by ignorance, frustration and resentment," he said. Orban noted that forgetting history, especially forgetting the Holocaust, must not be allowed in order to prevent the repetition of such tragedies. "It took a long time for the truth of those years, in which hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews and Roma lost their lives, to be recovered and spoken in democratic Romania. There were decades when this truth was first hidden behind the lie and cowardice of the rulers, then under the fabric of lies and hypocrisy of the communist regime. Democracy, tolerance, solidarity are values threatened today in many countries, even with long tradition and democratic experience. Educating the new generations, the sincere commemoration of the tragedies of 80 years ago, speaking truth, however harsh it may be, are the means by which we must prevent the future from being dominated by hatred, chauvinism, anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia." AGERRPES (RO- author: Dana Piciu, editor: Florin Marin; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)