75 years on, survivors return to Auschwitz

Warsaw/Oswiecim, January 27

Seventyfive years after the liberation of Auschwitz, a dwindling number of elderly Holocaust survivors gathered at the former German Nazi death camp on Monday to honour its more than 1.1 million, mostly Jewish, victims and to share their alarm over rising anti-Semitism.

More than 200 survivors came from across the globe to the camp the Nazis built at Oswiecim in then-occupied Poland, to share their testimony as a stark warning amid a recent surge of anti-semitic attacks on both sides of the Atlantic, some of them deadly. Survivors dressed in blue and white striped caps and scarves symbolic of the uniforms prisoners wore at the camp, passed through its chilling “Arbeit macht Frei” (German for “Work makes you free”) black wrought-iron gate.

Accompanied by Polish President Andrzej Duda, they laid floral wreaths by the Death Wall in Auschwitz where the Nazis shot dead thousands of prisoners.

“We want the next generation to know what we went through and that it should never happen again,” Auschwitz survivor David Marks, 93, said earlier at the former death camp, his voice breaking with emotion.

Thirty-five members of his immediate and extended family of Romanian Jews were killed in Auschwitz, the largest of Nazi Germany’s camps that has come to symbolise the six million European Jews who died in the Holocaust.

From mid-1942 the Nazis systematically deported Jews from all over Europe to six camps — Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.

Organisers insist that Monday’s memorial ceremony must focus above all on what survivors have to say rather than the bitter political feuds that have tainted the run-up to the anniversary. — AFP

Poland, Israel condemn racism

Oswiecim: The Presidents of Israel and Poland called on Monday for greater global efforts to combat anti-Semitism as the world marked 75 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp amid concerns over a resurgence of anti-Jewish prejudice. “Today we hear voices which spread hate, on the internet, on the street and in the centres of political power… Our duty is to fight anti-Semitism, racism and fascist nostalgia, those sick evils that… threaten to eat away at the foundations of our democracies,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told a news conference at a venue near the camp, which is now a museum. Polish President Andrzej Duda, who did not attend Israel’s national Holocaust Memorial last Friday because he was not allowed to speak, thanked Rivlin for his presence at Auschwitz. “This presence is a sign of remembrance, it is a visible sign of opposition to inhuman treatment, hatred, against all forms of hate, especially racist hate,” said Duda. AFP

Dutch govt offers first apology

The Hague: Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Sunday made the Netherlands’ first government apology for the war-time persecution of Jews. “Now the last survivors are still with us, I apologise today in the name of the government for what the authorities did at that time,” Rutte said. He was giving an address in Amsterdam in memory of victims of the Holocaust on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. AFP