The message was published today on the official website of the Presidency of the Republic to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.

The text states that "the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp was liberated 80 years ago, revealing the scale of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime in that and other places, which forever shocked the entire world."

On this date, "a landmark representing the end of the Holocaust", the President of the Republic "joins the celebrations of the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, paying a heartfelt tribute to all the victims of Nazi barbarity".

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa "reiterates the imperative of preserving the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, as well as promoting tolerance and the fight against hatred and segregation".

"In an increasingly polarised world, it is our permanent and collective obligation to remember the victims of anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred and discrimination, so that abominable acts like those perpetrated by the Nazi regime during the Second World War are never repeated."

In January 2020, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa represented Portugal at the 5th World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem, where he expressed "the solidarity of the Portuguese people towards the six million victims" of the Nazi genocide.

"We have not forgotten, this cannot be repeated", he said at the time.

In Israel, the President of the Republic had the opportunity to meet with Holocaust survivors.