On the anniversary of the release of the internees from the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, in Ljubljana, the Union of Societies of Combatants for the values of the Slovene National Liberation Struggle held a commemoration ceremony for all victims of the Holocaust.
“Arriving in the camp, each internee received their number, and I got number 63721. From that moment on, we were no longer called by our first and last names, but numbers,” said one of the World War II concentration camp detainees.
Over 63,000 Slovenes experienced horrors of the Nazi and fascist concentration camps, more than 12,000 never returned home.
Sonja Vrščaj, who experienced Auschwitz, wishes the young to love their country, language and home: “Just like we loved them then, so they would defend them without question. Also, whenever anyone poses a threat to those three fundamental things, they should love to defend them the way we did”.
Concentration camps destroy human dignity, and today this is done by those who want to blot out the crimes.
“Oblivion is a crime. It’s been created by those who find it difficult to listen to what was done in the past, and those who silently approve the doings. In order not to allow those people, who still approve the crimes done here and abroad, to be granted power to perform destructive actions, we need to keep evoking the memory of all horrors committed in the camps throughout the world, before, during and after the Second World War, as well as nowadays,” highlighted the writer Peter Kovačič Peršin.
Present generations are responsible for establishing peace and human kindness in the world. Only such world would make amends to the deceased and suffering victims.