Auschwitz Survivors, World Leaders, Mark 65th Anniversary of the Camp's Liberation on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

by Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

 
Photo: Visitors pass beneath the infamous sign marking the entrance to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. [Source: Reuters]

AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU, Poland - Wednesday, January 27 marked the sixty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army's 100th Lvov Infantry Division. Memorials marking the anniversary took place across Europe to honor those who lost their lives in the Holocaust.

At the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke to crowds of survivors and world leaders who had gathered to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

He said: "I have come here today from Jerusalem to tell you: We will never forget. We will not allow the Holocaust deniers or those who desecrate [Jewish] graves and signs to erase or distort [our] memory.

At the same time, Israel President Shimon Peres addressed the Bundestag in Berlin, not far from Wannsee, where, in 1942, the Nazis formulated plans to carry out their goal of the industrialized mass murder of Europe's Jews. Peres explicitly drew parallels between Nazi Germany and present-day Iran, which he called a "fanatical regime" and a "danger to the entire world."

In his reflections on the Holocaust, Peres said that those who carried it out were "still [alive] on German and European soil, and in other parts of the world." He told German MPs: "My request of you is: Please do everything to bring them to justice."

Approximately 1.5 million people were murdered at the Auschwitz camps; ninety percent of whom were Jews. Victims also included non-Jewish Poles, Roma gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war.

Auschwitz survivor, Lilly Ebert, 79, from north London, told the BBC that she remembers the camp "so vividly, it could have happened yesterday." Ebert was taken to Auschwitz with her family in 1944 and remains traumatized by the experience to this day. She said:

"It's important to be tolerant with each other. It makes no difference what religion you are or the color of your skin."

At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI recalled "the horror of crimes of unheard-of brutality that were committed in the death camps created by Nazi Germany." He said:

"May the memory of those events, especially the tragedy of the Shoah that has struck the Jewish people, induce respect for the dignity of every person so that all men can perceive themselves as one big family."

Marian Turski, an Auschwitz survivor, recalled the lice, the humiliation, the starvation and the bitter cold of the winter sixty-five years ago. He said:

"I had secretly made myself a vest, cut from a cement bag...A guard found it, told me I had stolen German property, and beat me terribly."

Those who gathered at Auschwitz on Wednesday passed under a replica sign reading "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Makes You Free." The original was stolen last month and cut into three pieces.

Survivor August Kowalczyk who spent two years at Auschwitz said: "This place determined who I am today, aged nearly ninety...I still have one mission - to pass on to the next generation knowledge of what happened here."

 
Photo: Some of the 600 children liberated from the Auschwitz-II extermination camp showing their tattooed arms. [Source: Reuters]

For more information, please see:

The Jewish Chronicle - The last survivors return to Auschwitz - 28 January 2010

BBC - Holocaust Day marked at Nazi death camp Auschwitz - 27 January 2010

BBC - Auschwitz Survivors mark Holocaust Memorial Day - 27 January 2010

The Jerusalem Post - Netanyahu at Auschwitz: Never again - 27 January 2010

Telegraph.co.uk - Holocaust Memorial Day marked on Auschwitz liberation anniversary - 27 January 2010