International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2016

What if the memory were missing? What does forgetting imply?

Forgetting means turning away from those values that make us what we are; we’ve fought for these values: tolerance, brotherhood, solidarity.
Seventy-one years ago, on 27 January 1945, when the gates of Auschwitz were opened, the world realized that these values had been completely dismissed by man’s conscience, thus allowing prejudice, brutality, inhumanity to spread. Celebrating the International Holocaust Remembrance Day every year, now and over the coming years, means to know what forgetting implies.

If we forgot the Holocaust, we would also ignore the teachings and words of those who survived the Holocaust and who courageously wanted to tell what it was, reliving the trauma and pain of that terrible experience. Unfortunately, the voices of the survivors are fewer and fewer, as time goes by, and everybody’s active engagement is crucial, so that what they’ve recounted won’t be lost.

On the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a lot of initiatives organized in Trentino by libraries, organizations and associations, are an opportunity for all citizens not to forget and to make themselves aware of the mistakes of the past, in order not to make them again in the future.

In the words of Primo Levi, "If it’s impossible to understand, it is necessary to know": in fact, it’s our duty to know the facts, in order to keep alive the memory of the victims, and to create a better world.