Two schools in the Belgian capital, Brussels, announced that they were refusing to participate in the Stolpersteine ceremony in memory of Belgian Jews murdered in the Holocaust, claiming that "the schools do not want to force children to discuss the Holocaust in light of the current situation in the Middle East."
One of the schools involved recently removed the Israeli flag that was part of the "Flags of the World" event, following a complaint by a parent about the presence of the flag in the schoolyard.
The chairman of the Association of Jewish Organizations in Europe, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, expressed shock and outrage at the decision, noting that such an ignorant attitude toward what happened is precisely why both schools must participate in the ceremony.
In a statement delivered today, Rabbi Margolin said: "In times of unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism, we must pass on to the next generation the historic warning of the greatest crime against humanity. The Holocaust is beyond politics. Trying to link the mass murder of 6 million Jews to the current conflict in Gaza is shocking and constitutes a terrible moral failure on the other hand, schools that have a moral, civil and human obligation to transmit the reality of the Holocaust to the next generation."
He added: "I believe that the decision was made out of a desire not to harm the parents of a certain group of students belonging to a certain religious background. But this is devotion to the most despicable lie: the lie that tries to draw a parallel between the Holocaust and the war in Gaza. Belgium's Minister of Education must intervene. We cannot erase the truth in order to please a minority that might think otherwise."
* Bihadrei Haredim contributed to this article.
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