Athens, 4 February 2022

Hellenic Parliament Library marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day

On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, the Parliament Library organised an online event, with keynote speaker the Professor of Political Philosophy and Head of the Athens University Department of Philosophy Vana Nikolaidou-Kyrianidou.

The United Nations has declared January 27 as the International Remembrance Day of Holocaust Victims, which, in 1945, was the liberation date of the largest concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland. In January 2004, the same date was established by a unanimous decision of the Hellenic Parliament, as Day of Remembrance of the Greek Jewish Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust.

In her lecture entitled "Auschwitz: Hell on Earth and the fantasy of omnipotence", the speaker analysed, -in terms of political philosophy-, the horror and terror experienced by Nazi camp prisoners, but also the characteristics that formed the Nazi ideology of  dehumanisation. As she characteristically stated, "Auschwitz, as the symbol of all these places of martyrdom, will always signal the twentieth century as the Primo Levy century, revealing that turning human beings into a specimen of the animal species, together with the Genocide constitute the core of Totalitarianism ".

Discussion followed, moderated by the Head of the Library Department Maria Kamilaki. The Head of the Hellenic Parliament General Directorate for Electronic Administration, Library and Publications Georgios Angelopoulos, referred to the Hellenic Parliament's historic decision to fully finance the creation of a Permanent Greek Exhibition in Oswiecim, Poland, an effort initiated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and carried out with the contribution of the Jewish Museum of Greece, presenting in detail the project design, the working progress to date, but also operational difficulties.

 

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