The 60th anniversary of the liberation of the extermination camp of Auschwitz was celebrated this year, on the Day of Memory (27 January): a symbolic date chosen to remember what that camp represented during the three years of its existence. The Belgian bishops recalled the anniversary in issuing a Declaration against the new forms of anti-Semitism in recent days. They also warn against what they call a new form of growing “fundamentalism, a fertile terrain for the growth of hatred of the Jews”, though without expressly citing Islamic fundamentalism. In their declaration the Belgian bishops also express solidarity to the Jewish community in the country and survivors of the concentration camps. At the same time they recall the declaration “Nostra Aetate” of Vatican Council II, which had strongly condemned “all forms of anti-Semitism”. In their document the bishops also reject any “downplaying” of the Shoah, declaring that the “tragic and representative character of the genocide of European Jews during the Second World War must not be placed in doubt”. “As shown by the genocide of the Jews the bishops conclude the mechanism of genocide continues in many other places of the world, right down to our own day”.
