UDIK Udruženje za društvena istraživanja i komunikacije
Holocaust Remembrance Day is an international memorial day on 27 January which marks the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Auschwitz – Birkenau by Soviet troops in 1945. In the period between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis and their collaborators across Europe persecuted millions of people. They treated them extremely inhuman, deprived them of dignity and finally killed. In 2005, United Nations General Assembly adopted a formal resolution on the commemoration of this day.
As stated in UDIK’s publication “Sarajevo: Remembrance of the Holocaust Victims”, about 80% of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Jews lived in Sarajevo. Of the approximately 10,500 Jews who were in Sarajevo before World War II, approximately 9,000 were taken to Ustasha and Nazi camps. About 1,500 surviving Jews returned to Sarajevo after the war. Most of the survivors were participants in the National Liberation War. A large number of Jews were taken to the camps until the end of 1941, and many of them died in the camps during the winter of 1941-1942. By the end of 1942, the last groups of Jews were taken from Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the course of that year, perhaps the largest number of Jewish women and children were killed in Stara Gradiška, Jasenovac, Đakovo and other killing grounds, which destroyed almost the entire Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For us, as representatives of civil society, the term Holocaust means never again. It means responsible remembrance and constant reminder of crimes, especially today when warmongering politics are popular in the world. Our message this year is solidarity with the victims of Russian aggression against Ukraine, with the victims of the war in Syria, with migrants who wander and freeze in our streets. These are all our responsibilities that show that we have not learned much from previous history. Showing solidarity through programs to help these victims shows our level of awareness towards the weakest. That is why it is a defeat to talk about the Holocaust only on this day. At a time when we are witnessing expressions of hatred towards everyone who thinks, looks and lives differently. That is why remembering the victims of the Holocaust is extremely important. In order to develop the values on which democratic societies rest.
