EJC Executive Vice-President Raya Kalenova took part in a commemorative event ahead of the Memorial Day of the Hungarian Victims of the Holocaust, hosted by H.E. Mr. Tamás Iván Kovács, Ambassador of Hungary to Belgium and Luxembourg.
The Memorial Day of the Hungarian Victims of the Holocaust, observed on 16 April, this year marks a somber 80th anniversary. On that day in 1944, the first ghettos were established in in North-Eastern Hungary and Transcarpathia, paving the way for the tragic fate of over 550,000 Hungarian Jews who perished during the Holocaust.
The event held at the Liszt Institute in Brussels featured an opening speech by H.E. Ambassador Tamás Iván Kovács and a compelling testimony by Baroness Regina Suchowolski-Sluszny, who survived as a hidden child during the Holocaust in Belgium.
“Looking back from the present to the past at the milestone of eight decades, the horrors of the Holocaust can be truly discovered only if we look closely the human destinies, the victims and their specific life path,” said Ambassador Kovács.
“The survivors can tell us what was the world like that took away first the dignity of the European Jews. The world that later took away the freedom of the European Jews. The world that at the end took away the life of European Jews.”
The commemoration culminated with a poignant moment of a solemn ceremony where Raya Kalenova lit one of the memorial candles in remembrance of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
The event was attended by ambassadors, representatives from the Jewish community, other minority groups, and civil society organisations.
