On 30 January, the Three Cultures of the Mediterranean Foundation held a moving ceremony to mark the international commemoration of the Holocaust Remembrance Day and Day for the Prevention of Crimes against HumanityThis date was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in remembrance of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp on 27 January 1945.
The event was attended by the two co-presidents of the Foundation, André Azoulay, Advisor to His Majesty the King of Morocco, and Antonio Sanz, Minister of the Presidency, Interior, Social Dialogue and Administrative Simplification of the Andalusian Regional Government. Along with important authorities and representatives of the different religious denominations, the event was also attended by the public, including a large group of secondary school students who, with their presence, reinforced the idea of the need to remember and learn about history to prevent horrors such as the Holocaust from happening again.
Among the authorities who accompanied us were the President of the Andalusian Parliament, Jesús Aguirre; Ricardo Sánchez Antúnez, Government Delegate of the Andalusian Regional Government; the Consul General of Morocco in Seville, Sidi Sidi Abbah; Noa Hakim, Spokesperson of the Israeli Embassy in Madrid; Tomás Burgos, Deputy Minister of the Presidency, Interior, Social Dialogue and Administrative Simplification of the Andalusian Regional Government; Isaac Benzaquén, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain; Jaime Moreno Bau, Director of the Sefarad-Israel Centre; Enric Millo, Secretary General for External Action and the European Union of the Andalusian Regional Government; Aziza Bennani, Vice-President of the Tres Culturas Foundation; Khalid Nieto, President of the Seville Mosque Foundation; and Gabriel Sánchez, Ecumenical Delegate of the Archdiocese of Seville.
The most moving moment of the morning, along with the candle-lighting ceremony in memory of the victims of the Nazi genocide, came with the testimony of a Holocaust survivor: Robert Wolfberg (Berlin, 1940).
His account, based on his parents' memories, shocked everyone present. Until mid-1943 his father worked for Siemens in Berlin. When his paternal grandparents were captured and killed in an extermination camp, his father's contacts tipped them off and they managed to escape and hide in the cellar of his maternal grandparents' village house, where they remained hidden for two years. In the last stage they were left with few supplies and the grandparents tried to shop in different shops outside the village so as not to raise suspicions that they were hiding in the cellar. Her father used to go out at night to look for food in the fields. In May 1945, Russian troops liberated the village. At first, the Russian army imprisoned his father because he was German, but he asked to speak to a Jewish officer, and after a conversation with him in YiddishHe managed to be released and obtain a safe-conduct. His parents then decided to leave Germany as soon as possible. After some time, thanks to a visa obtained in Paris, they emigrated to Chile, and in 1961 the whole family moved to Israel, where Wolfberg had four children and nine grandchildren.
After her testimony, the host of the event, Varda Fiszbein, recited a poem in Hebrew and Spanish alluding to the Shoah, followed by the lighting of six candles in honour of the more than eight million people murdered by the Nazi regime.
Those in charge of lighting the candles were Isaac Benzaquén, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain; Enric Millo, Secretary General of Foreign Action and European Union of the Andalusian Regional Government, and Concepción de Santa Ana, Director of the Tres Culturas Foundation; Jaime Moreno Bau, Director of the Sefarad-Israel Centre; Robert Wolfberg, Holocaust survivor, and Noa Hakim, spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Madrid; Jesús Aguirre, President of the Andalusian Parliament; and the presidents of the Foundation, Antonio Sanz, Minister of the Presidency, Interior, Social Dialogue and Administrative Simplification of the Andalusian Regional Government; and André Azoulay, Advisor to His Majesty the King of Morocco.
Particularly moving was also the moment of the recitation of the kadish -the Jewish prayer dedicated to the deceased - by Salomón Corcia, president of the Jewish Community of Seville, as well as the interfaith prayer for all the victims by representatives of the Jewish, Catholic and Muslim communities. Their heartfelt words and commitment reflected the spirit of all those present: mutual respect and the prevalence of dialogue between people of different cultures, nationalities and religious denominations.
This spirit, which marks the Foundation's guidelines, was also evident in the final speeches of the two co-presidents, who closed the event with speeches focused on the need for peaceful coexistence between peoples and the rejection of intolerance. In this way, the memory of atrocities such as those that took place during the Holocaust served to vindicate the importance of remembering the past in order to avoid their repetition in the present.
The event was accompanied by a string quartet from the Barenboim-Said Foundation who performed Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations No. 9 'Nimrod' for string quartet.