Financiarul

The Holocaust tragedy in Romania is a heartrending chapter in recent history, President Traian Basescu said on Thursday in a speech to a reception extended at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace to commemorate the Holocaust Day in Romania. “After 50 years of successive dictatorships and with the regain of its freedom in 1989, Romania embarked on a long process of retrieving its memory of history, in full respect of the moral and political values that define democracy and within the coordinates of a continual exercise of honesty.

For a very long time, Romanian citizens were presented the recent past in a partial way, without the necessary critical view. Today, in a free and democratic society, we have a duty to know our history,” the President said. He underscored that the Holocaust tragedy is a “heartrending chapter in recent history,” that bring us all before the urgency of retrieving memory and assuming our past.

He added that the members of the Jewish community and the Romany community were victims of systematic persecutions, deportations and hatred as a state policy in the years 1940-1944, under the Ion Antonescu regime. “It is our duty to always remember their sufferings and honour their memory.

The commemoration of the Holocaust Day in Romania is clear proof that we have assumed this duty and to the respect Romania has always displayed for diversity. All the initiatives of the Romanian state officials along these years in the area of commemorating, studying and researching the Holocaust are the expression of responsibility and maturity on the part of the Romanian society,” the President said. Basescu added that the Elie Wiesel National Institute for Romanian Holocaust Studies, a high school textbook of Holocaust History and the unveiling of the Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest are important steps on the path to historical truth.

He also said that the unveiling ceremony of the memorial was a moment of deep-running emotion and profound homage to the memory of the Holocaust victims, a moment of acknowledging responsibility. “The younger generation is the future of any nation.

It is our duty to pass to them the truth about the past and responsibility for the future,” said Basescu. The President mentioned that on Thursday evening he bestowed important decorations on those who suffered during the anti-Semite and xenophobe persecutions and who conveyed at the price of their sufferings the value of human dignity. “I want to use this opportunity to express once again my respect to the members of the Jewish community and the Romany community of Romania, along with my full gratitude to the International Commission for Holocaust Studies in Romania for their work,” the President concluded.

Attending the reception at the Cotroceni Palace, alongside members of the Jewish and the Romany communities of Romania, were Senate Chairman Mircea Geoana; Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Roberta Anastase; ministers Catalin Predoiu, Gheorghe Pogea and Theodor Paleologu; Chairman of the Court of Accounts Nicolae Vacaroiu; US ambassador in Bucharest Mark Gitenstein; Director of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) George Maior; Director of the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE) Mihai Razvan Ungureanu; Prosecutor General Laura Codruta Kovesi; former President Emil Constantinescu, as well as MPs Aurel Vainer, Nicolae Paun and Varujan Pambuccian. On Thursday morning, the President attended the solemn unveiling of a Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest.