Brazil remembers Shoah victims

Remembering the Holocaust is one way to prevent it from recurring, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said at a memorial ceremony in Salvador.

Rousseff joined several Jewish and non-Jewish officials at a ceremony Jan. 29 in Brazil’s third-largest city remembering Jewish and Afro-descendants — people of black African ancestry.

“We are here to express ourselves about a stain in the history of humankind,” she said. “Remembering is a way to build the mechanisms to prevent it from happening again.”

She added that Brazil supports the creation of a “democratic and non-segregating” Palestinian state.

Claudio Lottenberg, president of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation, the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, recalled the 20,000 Afro-descendants in Germany who lost their lives during the Holocaust.

Earlier in January, Rousseff approved an agreement to include Jewish themes such as the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in the curricula in some schools in Brazil. — jta