Commemorative ceremony at Terezín National Cemetery

Several hundred people, including war veterans, government ministers, parliament deputies, church dignitaries and cultural figures gathered at Terezín National Cemetery on Sunday to pay homage to victims of the Holocaust. Speaker of the Senate Milan Štěch said in his speech that this dark chapter of history required self-reflection and objectivity. He stressed that one could not put on par the atrocities of the criminal Nazi ideology with the post-war expulsion of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. The Nazis interned 155,000 Jews at the Terezín camp between 1941 and 1945. Up to 100,000 of them were transported to Auschwitz and other death camps, around a fifth of those interned in Terezín met their deaths there.