16 March 2010
A delegation of Conference of European Rabbis met with European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek in Brussels on Tuesday. The delegation, which included Philip Carmel, Executive Director of the Lo Tishkach Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Brussels, Albert Guigui and CER Executive Director Aba Dunner, called on the President of the European Parliament to activate the Continent’s younger generation to preserve some of the vital remnants of Jewish history in places where most of the Jewish population was wiped out in the Holocaust.
Recent developments in European Union legislation and the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty have placed a greater role on the European institutions to initiate and to constructively build dialogue with Europe’s Jewish representative organisations. President Buzek pledged his support for European Union-backed initiatives in support of the preservation of Jewish heritage in Europe. The rabbis stressed the need for a continual dialogue between the Parliament and religious groups and also to involve grassroots Jewish communities across the Continent in a continuing dialogue.
Rabbi Schudrich recalled the critical role played by President Buzek in rescuing the sanctity of the Auschwitz death camp site when, as Prime Minister of Poland in the 1990s, he took an active stand in pressing for the removal of the Carmelite convent on the site.
