AUSTRIA THANKS LITHUANIA FOR HONOURING THE RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS WHO SAVED JEWS OF VILNIUS GHETTO
The President of Austria Heinz Fischer expressed gratitude for Lithuania’s efforts to commemorate the Righteous among the Nations, the former German Wehrmacht Sergeant Anton Schmid who saved Jews of Vilnius Ghetto.
On 22 September at the ceremony of unveiling the memorial to Anton Schmid in Vilnius Antakalnis cemetery the gratitude of Austrian leader was conveyed by Austrian ambassador to Lithuania Helmut Koller.“It is a special honour for us that unveiling of this memorial was included in the governmental programme of the Year of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania and that this solemn act takes place on the eve of the most important day of this programme,” Austrian Ambassador said at the ceremony.
From 1941 to 1942 Austrian citizen and German Wehrmacht Sergeant Anton Schmid saved about 300 of Jews of the Vilnius Ghetto, kept in touch with Jewish underground and helped it. For this reason he was sentenced to death by Nazi authorities. Words from Schmid‘s last letter to his wife „I was only saving people“ are inscribed on the memorial.
„The Austrian who served in the army of the Nazi Germany dared to disobey insane orders and was himself condemned to death for saving hundreds of doomed Jews,” Lithuanian Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Asta Skaisgirytė Liauškienė said at the ceremony.
The ceremony of commemoration of A. Schmid was attended by representatives of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Minister of Culture Arūnas Gelūnas, Vice-Minister of Defence Vytautas Umbrasas, Mayor of Vilnius Artūras Zuokas, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of Lithuanian Seimas Emanuelis Zingeris, foreign ambassadors residing in Lithuania.
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