Dozens of government representatives and members of parliament from around Europe participated today (Tuesday) in a memorial service for the victims of the Holocaust, which was held at the site of the Terezin (Terezinstadt) camp in the Czech Republic.
The ceremony was held ahead of International Holocaust Day at the initiative of the Union of Jewish Organizations in Europe and within the framework of a pan-European conference discussing the issue of combating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in social networks, the media and universities.
The choice to hold the ceremony in the Terezin camp, which was a transit camp to the extermination camps for Jews from Central and Western European countries, was due to the Nazis' use of the camp as a representative "display ghetto" in order to deceive world public opinion regarding the extermination of European Jews in the ghettos and extermination camps.
"The Terezin concentration camp was 'marketed' by the Nazis as a normal 'Jewish settlement,'" the chairman of the Association of Jewish Organizations in Europe (EJA), Rabbi Menachem Margolin, emphasized at the conference, "but in complete contrast to this 'fake news,' about 120,000 of The 160,000 Jews who were imprisoned there perished in the Holocaust, including about 13,000 children. Some were sent to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, many died of starvation. Even today, fake news is a tangible danger to the well-being of Jews throughout Europe, a tool of hatred that is unfortunately amplified by social media and mixes conspiracy theories against Jews .
The dozens of European leaders who responded to our call to come to Terezin in preparation for the international anniversary of the Holocaust, pledged to fight against fake news that encourages anti-Semitism and implement educational programs to eradicate it."
Rabbi Margolin emphasized the conspiracy theories that blamed the Jews for the spread of the Corona epidemic as well as the outbreak of the war in Ukraine as the most contemporary examples of the tradition of spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the results of which could be as deadly as in the past.
Terezin concentration camp, photo: The symbolic inscription above one of the entrance gates at the concentration camp of Terezin, Czechoslovakia, reads 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work Makes You Free) - an example of brutal cynicism.
(Photo by Keystone/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** 6/2/09
During the ceremony in Terezin, Gideon Lev spoke, a Holocaust survivor from the camp, who in recent years has become a "TikTok star" fighting anti-Semitism.
Lev survived the stay in the camp with his mother.
His grandfather died of diseases in Terezin.
His father was sent to Auschwitz, and died on the way from Auschwitz to Bergen-Bazan.
"When the Nazis took over the Czech Republic, that was the end of the Jews in the country," testified the 87-year-old Lev, "Jews couldn't stay outside at night, couldn't have radios, and soon we were all transferred to the Terezin camp called the 'resettlement camp'. But he was far from it.
They put us in very crowded barracks, there was no room, women and children could not see their husbands, unless through the windows walking in silence.
The phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work sets you free") is one of the most cynical Nazi atrocities: you are free when you die.
I don't remember exactly how I survived life here as a child.
Children want to live; children do not want to die.
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