The Holocaust Must Never Happen Again

Tamás Vargha arrived for the International March of the Living commemoration at the memorial in Auschwitz. The delegation headed by him, which included 21 Holocaust survivors and 500 youngsters, held a commemoration separately in the late morning in front of Building 18 of the Auschwitz I camp, where the exhibition dedicated to the Hungarian victims can be seen.

“We remember with reverence those Jews who were persecuted and killed for their origin and religion during World War II” – said Tamás Vargha. Then he continued with “we remember with reverence six million Jewish fellow humans, 600,000 Hungarian compatriots and 2,000 Jews from Székesfehérvár who were taken away”.

“We can never let it happen again” – emphasized Tamás Vargha. The Holocaust was the largest tragedy not only for the Hungarian Jewish community but in Hungarian society and the whole world as well because “hundreds of thousands of our compatriots were torn from the body of a nation” – he said.

After observing a moment of silence to the memory of the victims, “we must stand straight and go on”, and after facing the past, “we must form the present and look forward into the future” […], we must act so that humanity will never commit the same sin again – said the state secretary.

He called it important that youngsters also participate in the commemoration as they are the future, they are the ones “who will remind their children and grandchildren so that this would never happen again”.

The participation of the Holocaust survivors at the commemoration also has an important message. With their presence, “they carry the message of life affirmation and love of life and that is the road which should lead to the future” – said Tamás Vargha.

The International March of the Living is part of the international educational program initiated in 1988. This year, it is also connected to the 80th anniversary of deportation of the Hungarian Jews. Monday afternoon, foreign delegations cover a three-kilometre distance on the way from Auschwitz I to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, following the route of the World War II death march.

The number of those deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp is estimated at approximately 1.3 million, including 1.1 million Jews, but there were also many Polish, Romani and Soviet prisoners of war among them. The number of Hungarian Jews deported there reached 430,000, they formed the largest group of Jews. Based on the data of the Auschwitz Museum, 325–330,000 of them were killed in gas chambers right after their arrival and some 25,000 were selected later for the same death. The number of people murdered in the extermination camp exceeds 1.1 million.