Paris, 8 July 2010The sixth annual presentation of Russian Holocaust Essay Laureates convened yesterday in Paris under the auspices of UNESCO.
Co-organized by the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre-Europe, Association Verbe et Lumière-Vigilance and the Russian
Holocaust Foundation, five students – from Moscow, St. Petersburg,
Yekaterinburg and Nizhny-Novgorod – selected from over 1,000
submissions, presented their research findings.
Attended by the Ambassadors of the
Russian Federation, the United States of America and Israel, the
proceedings were opened by UNESCO Deputy Director-General, Getachew
Engida.
Russian Ambassador and President of
UNESCO Executive Board, Eleonora Mitrofanova, emphasized the pernicious
effects of Holocaust denial and the need for universal acknowledgment of
the UN’s Holocaust Commemoration Day on 27 January (the date that
Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army in 1945).
Newsweek Bureau Chief, Christopher Dickey, drew the lessons for contemporary media from Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech.Auschwitz survivor and international lawyer, Samuel Pisar, in a keynote entitled “Remembrance with Hindsight and Foresight”, spoke as anorphaned child-survivor, calling himself “a young animal reacting
instinctively to danger”, following his mother’s dictum: “do whatever to
stay alive!” Noting his later role, during the Cold War, in commercialNewsweek Bureau Chief, Christopher Dickey, drew the lessons for contemporary media from Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech.Auschwitz survivor and international lawyer, Samuel Pisar, in a keynote entitled “Remembrance with Hindsight and Foresight”, spoke as anorphaned child-survivor, calling himself “a young animal reacting
transactions and conflict – mitigation between East and West, Pisar
compared Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany as “ Stalin wanted Me Red, Hitler wanted Me Dead”, adding his debt to both the US Army an the Red Army for saving his life.
UNESCO Education expert and Sorbonne President Georges Haddad, described
his sector’s Holocaust pedagogy and
his family's World War II experience in Tunisia.
Dr. Ilya Altman, co-Chair of the Russian Holocaust Сenter in Moscow
summarized its activities in the Former Soviet Union and the selection
process of the Essay laureates.Board members of Verbe et Lumière-Vigilance were led by Lithuanian – born child survivor, Alexandre Kaplan, and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre-France President, Richard Odier.
The Centre’s Director for
International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, thanked UNESCO and,
especially, special Adviser Dr. Graciela Vaserman Samuels, for
conceiving the event.
He also acknowledged that “ as a
British Jew, born just after World War II, his family was saved by 30
miles of Channel water from theHolocaust raging on the continent.”
“Moreover”, he stressed, “Hitler’s invasion of the UK was forestalled bythe Eastern Front. Thus, my life was spared by the Red Army and over 25
million Soviet casualties”.
(L-R)Back Row. Dr.Shimon Samuels, Christopher Dickey, Samuel Pisar, Dr. Ilya Altman, Russian Ambassador Eleonora
Mitrofanova, DDG Engida, Judith Pisah, Kristen Killion, U.S Ambassador David Killion, Richard Odier, Annette Blum, Dr.Graciela Samuels
Front Row , Sergei Ponomarev, Elizaveta Yakimova, Elena Testova, Alexeev Dmitry, Evgenia Mushtavinskaya
http://unesco.usmission.gov/russian-holocaust-essay-laureates.html
http://photos.state.gov/libraries/unesco/182433/pdfs/eb-chairman-statement-holocaust-essay-event.pdf
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=57735&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html