YEREVAN, JANUARY 27, ARMENPRESS. The President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan has issued an address on the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The Mass Media and Public Relations Department of the President’s Office informed “Armenpress” that the address runs as follows:

“The genocide committed against the Jews during the World War II is actually one of the most fierce and tragic pages of human history. January 27, which symbolizes the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, became one of the significant dates to end the evil of Holocaust.

The commemoration of the victims of Holocaust and condemnation of that massacre are topical as long as ethnic, racial and religious hatred and intolerance find their expressions in the world in various forms, as long as the threat of repetition of the crimes against humanity has not been eliminated.

Undoubtedly, the denialism and forgetting the victims of genocides, particularly on the state level, is one of the stages of that crime. It is a double crime not merely against the innocent victims, but against the present and the future as well. Maybe it would be possible to prevent the crimes committed during the World War II, if the crimes committed during the World War I were duly condemned on the international level and those responsible for them faced the punishment they deserved.

I again bow before the memory of the innocent victims of Holocaust and I want to express my support and solidarity with the Jewish people and the Jewish community of Armenia. The Armenian people, who mark the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, are more than familiar with the pain of the Jewish people.

I reaffirm our commitment to jointly struggle for the prevention of crimes against humanity and decisively say ‘never again’.”