The European Parliament honoured the memory of the victims of the Holocaust during an Extraordinary Plenary Session in Brussels today. President Roberta Metsola opened the solemn sitting. Corrie Hermann (pictured) then took the floor. She recalled the story of her father, Hungarian-born cellist and composer Pál Hermann, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1944. MEPs then observed a minute’s silence. In her speech, President Roberta Metsola said that the European Parliament “will always remember, will always speak up, and will always stand for dignity, hope and humanity”. “Today, we remember the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered by Nazi Germany”, Metsola said. “They were gassed, shot, starved. Murdered in ghettos, herded into cattle cars, buried in mass graves, killed in labour camps and in death camps designed solely to annihilate. Entire communities wiped out. Entire families slaughtered. Entire generations stolen. But even that horror did not wipe out the hope of the Jewish people. We remember, too, all those Roma and Sinti communities, and countless others slaughtered because of their faith, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability or political opinions”.

The Holocaust did not happen overnight. The dehumanisation of the Jews of Europe began long before Auschwitz. It began with words. With propaganda that vilified Jews as “dangerous” and “alien”. It began with exclusion, humiliation, and the systematic stripping away of dignity. By the time the ‘Final Solution’ was set in motion, the path had already been paved by indifference and hate”.