The President of the Hellenic Republic Constantine An. Tassoulas on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance for Greek Jewish Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust, laid a wreath at the Holocaust Memorial in Thiseio.
Immediately thereafter, Mr. Tassoulas made the following statement:
“When you hear footsteps of wolves, God be with you. Lie down on the ground with your eyes closed and hold your breath.” *
Today, with awe, contemplation and respect, we paid reverent tribute to the memory of the Greek Jewish Heroes and Martyrs of the Holocaust.
In memory of those who, in the name of a supposed collective guilt and responsibility, fell into the hands of wolves, into the hands of the scourge of Nazism and were punished in unimaginable and inhuman ways for their racial identity. What the more than six million victims of Nazism, whose memory we honor every year on January 27, Greeks and all others, tell us is that we must never imagine that evil is irrevocably defeated. Evil is never irrevocably defeated, unless the powerful antidote of memory comes into play. Only when we remember, only when all this torture is passed into our collective memory, only then can it not be repeated. And the very voices of these martyrs and heroes tell us that we ought to, with this painful memory, with this memorable pain, shield every instance in which the monster of Nazism, the monster of anti-Semitism, the monster of man’s hostility towards man, attempts to raise its head. We shield ourselves with remembrance, the evil that always lurks, waiting to return.
The Greek people, our country, walks in its peaceful mission and every January 27 honors the memory of our compatriots, Jews who paid an unjust and very heavy price for their racial identity. Our most fundamental duty, I repeat, is this. We ought to remember, so that the phrase “I do not forget ” becomes a shield against the evil that always lurks.
*Excerpt from Kostas Karyotakis’ poem “Hypothēkai ” (“Υποθήκαι”)
