Holocaust — Tuesday was a day of national commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust in Romania. Democracy, freedom, peace, diversity and the observance of human rights are the fundamental values of the European construction which we have to defend with all our energy, said the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis in a message conveyed on this day. He decorated 44 survivors of the Holocaust in Bucharest. In her turn, the PM Viorica Dancila said the heritage left by the Holocaust survivors should be relayed from one generation to the next. The officials of the Romanian Foreign Ministry also paid homage to the Holocaust victims, expressing solidarity with the survivors of the tragic events of WWII. The FM officials recalled that Romania had recently made significant efforts to assume its past, to condemn the denial of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. Between 2016-2017 Bucharest held the presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and in 2018 Parliament adopted a special law on fighting anti-Semitism. 77 years ago the regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu in Romania, an ally of Nazi Germany, started the deportations of Jews from eastern Romania to the occupied Soviet territories. Between 1941 and 1945 over 300 thousand Romanian Jews were killed. In total, 6 million Jews, mostly from Europe, were killed during WWII following Hitler’s Nazi regime’s extermination plan.
Paris — French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, originating from Romania, has been awarded Frances highest honor, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, in a ceremony led by President Emmanuel Macron, according to France Press. His wife Beate Klarsfeld has received the National Order of Merit in the same ceremony. Serge Klarsfeld was born in Bucharest in 1935 and managed to escape the Gestapo in 1943 fleeing to Nice where his parents had taken refuge. He obtained the French citizenship in 1950 and studied history and political sciences in Paris. For more than 50 years the Klarsfelds have militated for the Holocaust to be recognized and for the trial of Nazi criminals and of their accomplices from the Vichy regime. Serge and Beate Klarsfeld identified and exposed several leaders of the Nazi police in France among whom Kurt Lischka the Gestapo commander in Paris and Klaus Barbie, the famous executioner from Lyon whom they followed from 1971 until 1983.
CE — The Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu said Tuesday in the western city of Timisoara that the EU found itself in a key-moment in relation to the enlargement of the community space towards the Western Balkans. According to minister Melescanu, the Romanian presidency of the EU Council might become historic if it managed to speed up negotiations with Serbia as well as to obtain a formal invitation for Macedonia, to start accession negotiations. Romania will do its best to have positive results in the negotiations with the Western Balkans countries, the Romanian FM added. Romania will hold the presidency of the EU Council on the first half of 2019.
Aspen Institute — The Romanian Minister of Communications and Information Society, Bogdan Cojocaru, announced on Tuesday that his ministry would launch for public debate, in November, the smart city national strategy through which Romania’s cities will be encouraged to increase the degree of digitalization in relation to the citizens. Digitalization is a critical issue and everywhere in the world the debates around smart cities and the way in which we use existing platforms or in which we build other platforms are topical issues, said minister Cojocaru at the Bucharest Forum, organized by the Aspen Institute. (news updated by Lacramioara Simion)
