Today, on the seventy-seventh anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by Allied forces, Cyprus commemorates the victims of the Holocaust who were brutally murdered in one of the darkest moments of European and world history and reaffirms its commitment to combating all forms of discrimination, racism and xenophobia, including anti-Semitism.
The Holocaust Victims' Memorial Day is a day of reflection for the six million victims of a methodically organised atrocity. At the same time, it is a social imperative for the unceasing fight against racism, intimidation and xenophobia and a commitment to make every effort to ensure that humanity never again experiences such atrocities.
Cyprus has since 2019 adopted the operational definition of anti-Semitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and since 2021 has acquired observer status in the International Alliance, joining the people of Israel and underlining the necessity of historical memory.
Cyprus' commitment to protecting the memory of the Holocaust is fully aligned with the support, sympathy and practical assistance offered by the Cypriot people in the period 1946-1949 to the fifty-three thousand Jews who escaped the mass slaughter and found themselves in British-occupied Cyprus after the end of World War II.
On this historic day, we must not forget the past, but be vigilant against every manifestation of anti-Semitism, intolerance and every act that denies historical truth and desecrates the memory of the millions of victims.
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