Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked across the country

OSLO.Holocaust Remembrance Day in Norway.Photo : Berit Roald / NTB scanpix

International Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked at various locations across Norway on Friday.

In Oslo, the Finance Minister, Siv Jensen (FRP), gave a speech on behalf of the government.

Mayor of Oslo, Marianne Borgen (SV), and the head of the Jewish community, Ervin Kohn, also spoke.

Among those who made appeals, were rabbi Joav Melchior, Karen Christine Friele, and Natalina Jansen.

On January 27th, 1945, the prisoners of the concentration and extermination camps Auschwitz-Birkenau were liberated by Soviet soldiers. In 2005, the UN General Assembly declared that the day should be an international day of remembrance for the Holocaust.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper has published figures for the high death toll that came as a direct result of the holocaust.

They wrote that between five and six million Soviet and European Jews, more than five million Soviet prisoners of war and non-Jewish civilians, more than two million non-Jewish Polish and Yugoslavian civilians, more than 200,000 gypsies, 70,000 mentally and physically handicapped, and unknown numbers of political prisoners, resistance fighters, homosexuals and deportees were killed in the holocaust.

In Norway, a national commemoration on the quayside in Oslo was held at the place where a memorial for deported Norwegian Jews stands. The Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities is responsible for the annual event.

 

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today