India can teach tolerance to world: Israeli envoy

Israeli Ambassador Daniel Carmon Tuesday said since India has long served as a "peaceful" home to several Jews, it stood in good stead to teach tolerance to other nations.

"Anti-Semitism never set its foot in India. Jews have been living here peacefully without persecutions for over two millennia. This is a lesson and message of tolerance India can and should teach other nations," Carmon said here during a commemoration event of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Following a UN resolution in 2005, urging every member nation to honour the Holocaust victims' memory, the memorial day is observed annually Jan 27 for the 6 million Jews and others who lost their lives in a genocide by the Nazi regime.

"The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, ruthless annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators," the Israeli envoy said.

"It was a crime... different not only in its magnitude and cruelty but also in its manner and purpose as a mass criminal enterprise organised by a state against defenseless civilian population," Carmon said.

Over 100 schoolchildren participated in the memorial ceremony organised by Alliance Française de Delhi in association with the embassies of Israel and France as well as the United Nations Information Centre, an Israeli embassy statement said.

Several university students also participated later in a session held in the afternoon.

The evening concluded with the screening of the film - "Rafting to Bombay" - by Israeli film director Erez Laufer, which showcased a story of a five-year-old Nahum and his mother who escaped the Nazis in Poland, crossed Europe by train and sailed to India, the statement added.