On the eve of the celebration, Israel's Charge d'Affaires in Poland, Tal Ben-Ari Yaalon laid flowers at the Garden of the Righteous in Warsaw to pay homage to Polish nationals who rescued the lives of others or who stood up in defence of human dignity, the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw said in a Twitter post on Friday.
The Garden of the Righteous is a memorial place in central Warsaw founded in 2014 to honour those who, in the face of the 20th and 21st century totalitarianisms and genocide, had the courage to defend human dignity.
The European Day of the Righteous has been observed since 2013. The concept was introduced by Yan Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. The Yad Vashem Institute has awarded the medal of Righteous Among the Nations to non-Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust since 1963. However, Moshe Bejski, former President of the Righteous Commission, later broadened this concept to all genocide cases and forms of totalitarianism.
According to the latest data, the list of the Righteous includes 27,712 people from 49 countries. 7,112 of them hail from Poland.
(mo,ek)
Source: PAP, polin.pl