The call was made in the Memorial
Synagogue near Moscow's Poklonnaya Gora, where Christian and Jewish
organizations gathered for a roundtable to discuss dialogue between the
two religions.
"The participants of the roundtable
declare that further Jewish-Christian dialogue should be open,
trust-based, long-term and be translated into practical activity, which
is able to strengthen the tolerance of Russian society," a joint
statement said.
The practical activity, the
participants said, should be related to commemorating the victims of the
Holocaust and include educational programs as well as establishing
monuments and memorials in places of mass killings of Jews during WWII.
"We call on the Russian president, the
Federation Council and the State Duma [the upper and lower houses of
the Russian parliament] to introduce National Holocaust Memorial Day to
be declared on January 27, the date when [the Soviet] Army liberated the
Auschwitz death camp," the statement said.
The UN declared January 27, when the Soviet Red Army liberated the
largest Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, International
Holocaust Memorial Day in 2005.