Holocaust Starts with Speeches of Hatred, Xenophobia, and Racism: Israeli Ambassador Warns

ENA, January 27/2020 Israel's Ambassador to Ethiopia, Raphael Morav warned that “holocaust starts with speeches of hatred, xenophobia, and racism. We must stand as they start, not waiting for it to pass or change, because words end up with genocides and holocaust.”

The ambassador made the remark at the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust marked in Addis Ababa today.

Israel's Ambassador to Ethiopia, Raphael Morav recalled that Auschwitz Birkenau was the largest industrialized killing centre built  to  implement  the  genocide  of  the  Jewish  people  of  Europe.  Of the approximately 1.1 million people murdered there, nearly 1 million of them were Jewish, killed simply because they had been born Jews. 

“Still, despite the incomprehensible scale of human suffering caused by the holocaust, we continue to witness anti-Semitism and other forms of racial and ethnic discrimination on the rise in many quarters of the world”, the ambassador noted.

Diversity is a plus, an advantage for every society, Ambassador Morav observed, adding that  promoting diversity for people like in Ethiopia results with more thought, more ideas, and more solutions.. “We have (therefore) to encourage diversity,” he underscored.

Elaborating on diversity, the Israeli ambassador pointed out that,“We (however) need to be vigilant.We need to invest in education and youth. We need to strengthen social cohesion so that people feel that diversity is a plus, an advantage not a threat.”

Accordingly to him, the holocaust was a defining point in history and its lessons have much to teach about the danger of extremism and the prevention of genocide today.

Its universal dimension encourages education on this tragedy so that future generations will firmly reject all forms of racism, violence and hatred, Morav emphasized.

Germany's Ambassador to Ethiopia, Brita Wagener said on her part the commemoration targets in preventing another holocaust, racism, xenophobia and all kinds of discrimination.

“We have to remember the holocaust, prevent what happened, and also give tribute to all the victims,” she added.