Holocaust Remembrance Day marked with online concert at Prague’s Spanish Synagogue
Jan. 27 will be the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Aushwitiz; it has been an international memorial day since 2005.
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International Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on Jan. 27, and this year due to restrictions commemorative events in the Czech Republic will be virtual.
The day is in remembrance of the genocide that resulted in the deaths of 6 million Jews and 11 million others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during World War II.
The United Nations General Assembly designated the day in 2005, which was the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust. The extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet forces on Jan. 27, 1945.
Wednesday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet forces in 1945. Due to the coronavirus, in lieu of traditional gatherings at Czech sites of remembrance, a memorial event at the parliament was broadcast live this morning, as will be a Czech-Israeli meeting and a gala concert at Prague’s Spanish Synagogue in the evening.
The spectre of the coronavirus, which has claimed so many lives, hung heavy in the air in a ceremonial chamber of the Senate; the echoing words of those honouring the memory of victims of the Holocaust, testimony to the extraordinary circumstances on the particular International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Representatives of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies gathered in the Czech Senate on Wednesday for a commemorative event marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed around the world on January 27.
The meeting was organized by the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic and the Endowment Fund for Holocaust Victims in cooperation with the upper chamber of Parliament. Due to the coronavirus restrictions in place, speeches by the speakers of both chambers, Michaela Vidláková, a former prisoner of the Terezín ghetto, and Petr Papoušek, chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic, were broadcast online.