In Auschwitz, Poland, president of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola has been presented with the King David Award from the European Jewish Association (EJA).
Italian MEP Metsola received the award in recognition of her support to the Jewish community in Europe.
The award was given after her visit commemorating the victims of Shoah at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camps.Metsola also laid a wreath at the Death Wall and participated in a Memorial Ceremony.
“The award will serve to me as a continuous reminder of those heinous crimes committed against humanity in the past and to recall the importance of speaking up in defence of our common values today”, said Metsola in her acceptance speech.
She underlined, that the responsibility we carry must start within our own homes: “Anti-semitism is still rife in our societies. Holocaust deniers, conspiracy myths, disinformation and violence of every kind that targets and singles out members of our communities have no place in our Europe.”
Furthermore, she recalled the words of former President of the European Parliament Simone Veil: “The holocaust is the heritage of us all”. With this in mind, President Metsola reiterated her intention on having a permanent Holocaust memorial in the European Parliament.
She pledged to honour the legacy of the Shoah victims “by never forgetting, by never being indifferent, and by always, always speaking up”.
“At this place of horror, we must find hope. Our promise to those lost and to those who survived is to remember, to never be silent and to build a new world in their memory. We remember”, said President Metsola at the end of her visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camps, which also commemorated the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938).
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