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On Tuesday, Prime Minister Florin Citu delivered a message on the occasion the 80th anniversary of the Iasi Pogrom in which he underlined that "we must never let bloody history repeat itself.
"The last days of June remind us every year of a painful period that Romania went through exactly eight decades ago, when hatred and anti-Semitism darkened minds and pushed decision-makers and then law enforcement to acts of violence and crime against the Jews of Iasi. Nothing can justify what happened then, and nothing can erase the suffering of thousands of Iasi Jews then evicted from their own homes, separated from their families, crammed into death trains and trucks, most of them never to survive. Looking back at that large-scale assassination of the Jewish population under the Legionary regime of that time, we cannot but tremble at the thought that ordinary people, through no fault of their own, became victims of ideologies that divided the world, persecuted and killed people on racial grounds. We now remember with compassion, pain and revolt their sufferings and we must not ever let the bloody history repeat itself," says Citu in his message released by the government.
He points out that opening the Iasi Pogrom History Museum is a fitting gesture against forgetting the thousands of victims of the events of June 1941.
"We owe it to them to realise that we are all equal in the face of global dangers and only by being supportive can we overcome any challenge. For more than a year, the pandemic has affected us regardless of race, religious beliefs or any other criteria. The effects of global pollution, for which we are all responsible, affect us all equally. We can overcome such trials well by joining forces, not by division," he says.
He adds that, unfortunately, we are still witnessing "attempts by certain circles to normalise anti-Semitic, nationalist rhetoric, populism, negative discrimination on any grounds and, through manipulation, incite hatred and violence."
"Romanians want something else and they have fought for the values of democracy and my conviction is that we must respect their desire, including by fighting against any attempts to turn people against each other. May the memory of the victims of the Iasi Pogrom and of the Romanian Holocaust be eternal!" concludes Citu, Agerpres informs.
