Members of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH’s) Presidency Zeljko Komsic and Sefik Dzaferovic attended a commemoration on occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day here on Monday.
At the beginning of his address in the premises of Jewish Community in BiH’s capital Sarajevo, Komsic noted the importance of the historical date since it is “the largest and the most brutal crime of the past century, remembered by human civilization”.
“74 years later, we are reminded of 1945 when the Red Army released the seven and a half thousands of the prisoners who were left by Nazis in concentration camp Auschwitz,” Komsic said, highlighting that this crime should never repeat to anyone.
He recalled that in recent history, genocide and war crimes happened after the Nazi regime in the Second World War.
“I want to believe that, remembering the suffering of the victims of Auschwitz and all other sacrifices of monstrous minds, would be a lesson for new generations to reject ideologies based on segregation, intolerance, disrespect,” emphasized Komsic.
President of the Jewish Community of BiH Jakob Finci, said that holocaust was a tragedy of all mankind, and not just the Jewish people. Finci added that he is certain that the holocaust will be, in at least next 70 years, a “subject to multidisciplinary research, analysis, confirmation and, unfortunately, denial”.
Jan. 27 is designated by the United Nations General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Since 2005, the UN and its member states have held commemoration ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism.
Just before the start of World War Two, in 1939, some 14,000 Jews lived in BiH. There were about 12,000 living in capital Sarajevo, which would mean that every eighth citizen of Sarajevo was Jew.
During the Second World War, as a result of genocide committed by the forces of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), over 10,000 Jews were killed. Of the remaining 4,000, about half of them moved to the new state of Israel over the next few years.
Currently, some 1,000 Jews live in BiH.
(Source: Sarajevo Times, Xinhua, photo: 24sata.info)
