Debrecen4U January 27, 2025

Holocaust 80: Six thousand Jewish victims of Debrecen commemorated in the Pásti Street Synagogue

Exactly 80 years ago, on 27 January 1945, the Auschwitz death camp was liberated. 

The UN General Assembly declared this day International Holocaust Remembrance Day 20 years ago. The synagogue commemorated the 6,000 people from Debrecen who lost their lives in concentration camps, labour camps or ghettos.

The horrors of the Holocaust were recalled in the synagogue on Pásti Street with poems by Sándor Schwarcz, a Holocaust survivor from Debrecen. In his welcoming speech, Deputy Mayor István Puskás said, “80 years have passed, but the immeasurable evil that claimed the lives of so many people is still incomprehensible.”

The Debrecen ghetto began to be evacuated in July 1944, and transports to death camps, such as Auschwitz, began. Many did not live to see the liberation of the camps.

“Let’s think together now about what suffering, what trials, what humiliations our compatriots, our fellow citizens, our predecessors in Debrecen had to experience in those 7-8 months, and many of them even perished in it,” the deputy mayor emphasised.

“Before the Holocaust, 12,000 Jews lived in Debrecen, of whom 6,000 lost their lives in the ghetto, death camps, or labour service. Judaism is not safe in many parts of the world today, but it is in Hungary and Debrecen,” Tamás Horovitz said.

According to the president of the Jewish community, in addition to remembering, we must also work to ensure that the horrors of 80 years ago are never repeated. “In this situation, our task is especially great to try to do something for a better world, to leave a world free of terror and war for our children and grandchildren”, he highlighted.

This is why a programme will be launched to take students from Debrecen to Stadtallendorf, where, for example, Éva Fahidi, a former honorary citizen of Debrecen, worked as a forced labourer. The German students are coming to Debrecen to be shown how Jews once lived here. On Memorial Day, the Kaddish, or prayer, was said for the six thousand Holocaust victims in Debrecen, and the participants also placed memorial stones.

Source and photo credit: debrecen.hu