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The Vice President of Bulgaria at the opening of the exhibition ‘The Jews in the Bulgarian Territories "
The Vice-President of the Republic of Bulgaria, Iliana Iotova, urged on Friday to preserve the memory of the more than six million Jews killed in the death camps of the Second World War and called for a stand against the anti-Semitic manifestations currently being shown in the international public space.
The Bulgarian official took part in the opening of the exhibition ‘The Jews in the Bulgarian Territories – Documents of the life of the Jewish community in the National Library ‘Saints Cyril and Methodius’ of the Republic of Bulgaria’ which took place at the National Opera House Bucharest.
The Bulgarian vice-president said that history must not be forgotten and urged to attitude against anti-Semitism.
"For the things that happened in World War II, this history needs to be known and remembered, and that is exactly what this exceptional exhibition today is for, to be commemorated, to be remembered. And I have to say that it is not easy to keep the memory of those actions alive. Nowadays there are voices that deny the past and try to explain that there was not such an ugly and heavy machinery and that come from certain sides that are anti-Semitic and that lead to a radicalization (...) So we have to be very careful, we have to watch out that such things do not happen, that other things and these ideas do not spread through the media. We have to be very careful - and politicians and the whole community and the media - because in the 1920s, in Germany, these ideas, these things that encouraged hard and ugly actions started through the media", Iotova stressed.
The vice-president of the Republic of Bulgaria emphasized the contribution of the Bulgarians, common people, intelligentsia, and representatives of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church during the second WW to prevent the Jews deportation to the death camps showing that their names are found at the Memorial of the Holocaust Victims – Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (Israel).
Together with the general manager of the National Opera House Bucharest, Daniel Jinga, the opening was attended by the ambassador of Bulgaria to Bucharest, Radko Vlaikov, the ambassador of the State of Israel to Romania, Reuven Azar, Elisabeta Maria David, general manager of the Department for International Organisations and Multilateral Business in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Irina Cajal, the representative of the Federation of the Jewish Communities of Romania, members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to Bucharest.
Dedicated to the 80th celebration of the Bulgarian Jews rescue, the exhibition at ONB which is organized under the patronage of the president of the Republic of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev, presents the archives documents, books, and periodicals stored in the National Library in two separated thematic parts.