We must resolve to fight hatred — UN Resident Coordinator

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By
Muniratu Adams Zanzeh/ Eric Appah Marfo, GNA

Accra, Jan. 28, GNA
— Ms Sylvia Lopez-Ekra, the United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator, on Monday
advised that people of all nationalities should eschew hatred and collectively
resolve to stay united and promote peace.

“Even as hatred
persists, so must our resolve to fight it. Whenever and wherever extremism,
xenophobia, racism and intolerance are allowed to grow, the consequences will
be devastating, not only for the victims but for all of us,” she said.

“An attack on one is
an attack on all,” Ms lopez-Ekra stated, during the International Holocaust
Remembrance Day in Ghana’s capital, Accra.

The day was
organized by the Israel Embassy in collaboration with the Embassy of the
Republic of Germany and the UN in Ghana, on the theme: “75 years after
Auschwitz: Holocaust Education and Remembrance for Global Justice”.

Ms Lopez-Ekra called
on participants to speak up and not remain silent or indifferent, whenever
human beings were being made to suffer in any form. It must be a priority to
defend the vulnerable and demand justice on their behalf.

She said the memory
of the holocaust was a powerful reminder of what could happen when societies
stopped seeing their common humanity.

As such, she advised
that, “Let us live by example by being courageous, vocal and redouble our
efforts to build a future of dignity, equality for all-a future that leaves no
one behind”.

Mr Christoph
Retzlaff, the German Ambassador to Ghana, on his part attributed the holocaust
to the mastermind of Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, whose orders
were put into practice with “deadly precision” by his team of soldiers.


Germany as a
country, Mr Retzlaff said, had assumed the moral responsibility for the
inhumane deeds carried out by its ancestors and regarded the continuous
relationship that existed between the nation and the Jewish communities across
the world as a miracle.

“It comes close to a
miracle that Israel and Germany call each other partners and friends. And we
are grateful that the Jewish community in Germany is thriving and growing.
Synagogues are being built, Rabbis ordained, and Jewish schools being opened,”
he said.

However, he stressed
that in the midst of all the positive developments between Germany and the
Jewish community, more had to be done to ensure that the nations continued to
enjoy lasting co-existence.

He cited the
continuous guarding of synagogues in Germany due to constant attacks and other
anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish citizens in recent times as some
occurrences that ought to be address.

“Never must we allow
us to be complacent, to shrug and say, ‘Well, there always are a few crazy
people’. We have made the painful experience that it always starts with a few,”
he said.

“That is why our
attitude must be one of zero-tolerance when facing anti-Semitism especially in
Germany, in Europe and the world as a whole.”

The Holocaust was a
systematic murder of the Jewish population of Europe and North Africa during
World War II at the hand of the German Nazi government, led by Adolf Hitler and
its collaborators.

Approximately, six
million Jews were murdered by the Nazis between 1937 and 1945 alongside a
myriad of other groups the Germans considered undesirable or dangerous,
including the mentally and physically handicapped, the deaf, homosexuals, Roma
or Gypsies, political dissidents or intellectuals and many more.

GNA