Georgia officially declared it will commemorate January 27 as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Georgia’s Ambassador to Israel, Lasha Zhavania expressed his support of the country’s decision and shared a personal experience with a Holocaust survivor he met in Tel Aviv that encouraged him to push for the national day.
“I saw long row of numbers on her arm… I asked and she started telling the horrifying story of a little girl and her sufferings. Later, she left this world peacefully, satisfied and happy… proud of her children, and grandchildren, but the pain accompanied her all her life. While working on a draft of the decision… [I always saw her] in front of my eyes; she is always in my heart.”
While there was no Holocaust history in Georgia, the connection between the Caucasus nation and the Jewish State has been well established since the 1990s as it was the first to “open its doors” to Israel and the Jewish Agency.
“Georgia is a country where a massacre of the Jews has never happened. Its children have never oppressed my people, and we have lived sweetly as brothers for twenty centuries,” Zhavania recalled that Rabbi David Baazov, the leader of the Zionist movement in Georgia and head rabbi of Oni said.
January 27 was recognised in 2005 by United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 as International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
