This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, where with cold, bureaucratic precision, plans were laid out by the Nazi leadership to exterminate European Jews.

To mark the International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2017 please find here a message by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Yet, Holocaust deniers continue to have an audience. The so-called "hard" Holocaust denial is criminalized by law. This includes denying that the Holocaust ever happened, that Auschwitz existed or as European legislation states "publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes".

But what is often called "soft" Holocaust denial is much more difficult to unmask. Soft Holocaust denial accuses the Jews as a people of exaggerating the Shoah, it questions the relevance of the Holocaust for today's world, it attempts to belittle the Holocaust by pointing to other situations.

To underline the need to fight all forms of Holocaust denial the European Commission in cooperation with the Europaen Jewish Congress and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum screened, on 26 January the film Denial and First Vice-President Timmermans discussed the dangers of Holocaust denial with the protagonist of the film, Professor Deborah Lipstadt.

Antisemitism today appears in many forms and is not always easy to unmask. In May 2016 the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance adopted by unanimity a definition of Antisemitism as a useful legally non-binding tool.

Understanding the implications of the Holocaust is essential to unmask Antisemitism. Commissioner Věra Jourová spoke about the issue at a conference on 24th January.

The European Commission marks the occasion for its staff with an exhibition which Commissioner Jourová opened on 30 January  and a staff training on the role of civil servants in bringing about the Holocaust.

The European Union is the very product of learning from history, and Remembrance and memory stand at its core. This past year several survivors of the Holocaust past away, among them Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel. He insisted that "Memory has become a sacred duty of all people of goodwill". As the survivors pass away we must become the carriers of their messages.

Of particular worry is rising illegal hate speech on social media and the internet. We have seen how quickly hate speech can tilt into hate crime.The European Commission therefore concluded with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft on 26 May 2016 a code of conduct to review the majority of valid notifications of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content. The recently created High-level Member States expert group on Racism, Xenophobia and other forms of intolerance aims at improving further the fight against Antisemitism and other forms of hatred across Europe.