Senate, Madrid (Spain)
Carmen Calvo has asked to work "from this country and from this government trying to be the best democrats in each of our responsibilities."
"They paid with their lives cruelly and unfairly for being different, for claiming freedom," said the vice president, who added that "the worst indignity we can add to their murders is oblivion."
"The truth of their murders obliges us never to forget and to prevent those who pretend that we do so or that we deny this reality. On their murders, on the pain they have left to survivors, their families and entire generations, we must continue to build the only possible ethic of the coexistence of our democracy," he said.
Calvo has asked women to take "a particular voice that leads the dignity that it represents for everyone to prevent setbacks, forgetfulness and hatred." The women of the world "know about discrimination" he said and "we must together give greater impetus and greater energy" in the defense of democracy. "It transcends the political representation of each one of us, it is a commitment of the only sense that humanity has, to recognize itself, to recognize ourselves in our diversity," he said.
The act of State, presided over by the president of the Senate, Pilar Llop, has counted on the testimonies of Isaac Querub president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) and Ita Bartuv, survivor of the Holocaust. In addition, the Minister of Education, Isabel Celaá, representatives of the Diplomatic Corps accredited in Spain, deputies and senators, members of the Jewish community, the Gypsy community and Spanish republican associations have attended.
The European Parliament established 27 January as the day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust, coinciding with the date on which the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp was liberated. Spain incorporated this date of commemoration following the Agreement of the Council of Ministers of 10 December 2004.