Speaker of the Lithuanian parliament Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen issued a statement on the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.

“The Jewish Italian writer Primo Levi who was a Holocaust survivor wrote about a female friend of his who survived the Birkenau concentration camp. Giuliana Tedeschi saw the crematorium chimney from the window in her cell and asked an older female prisoner what was burning there. ‘We are burning there,’ she answered. This isn’t just the tragedy of six million Jews of the world, but our own–every country’s–painful history which deeply cut into Lithuania as well.

“But lately it seems the lessons of this history have been forgotten, with the inability to do without anger and ultimata, when the firing of weapons is heard along national borders and human dignity is crowded out. The world cannot allow for death to become more dear than life again. I believe we have the will to remain people,” she said.