Text: Martin Dvořák, Photo: Archive
Memorial letter by Martin Dvořák, Minister for European Affairs:
In our family, the fate of the Jews during the Holocaust was discussed, even though we children were not told all the horrors of that time. It was only later that I learned that my great-grandmother Emilie Taussig was one of the millions of victims of Nazi hatred. In 1942, she and other members of her family were deported to Terezín and later to Treblinka, from where she never returned. Her name and fate are now commemorated by the Stolperstein, which, thanks to the activities of one of my nieces, we had installed with our family a few years ago. Since then, we have been meeting there regularly every year so that future generations will not forget this tragic period in human history.
Unfortunately, racial hatred and extremism are once again on the rise in the world today. New “leaders” are emerging, intolerance is growing, while humanity and compassion are increasingly seen as weakness, or even as an insult. Let us not allow history to repeat itself.
