Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, center, and his wife Elke Buedenbender enter the Auschwitz I Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. Heads of State and survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp gathered Monday for commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the Soviet army’s liberation of the camp, using the testimony of survivors to warn about the signs of rising anti-Semitism and hatred in the world today. (Markus Schreiber/Associated Press)
75 years ago Soviet Army troops liberated Auschwitz. The horrors of the nazi concentration / death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Chelmno, Dachau, Ebensee, Flossenbürg, taught us nothing because in the years since Auschwitz was liberated there have been acts of genocide and massive ethnic and religious atrocities in purges in the Soviet Union / U.S.S.R., by European nations in most of post World War II colonial Africa and Southeast Asia, in India and Pakistan during the partition of the Indian subcontinent, during the prc seizure of Tibet, during the cultural revolution in the people's republic of china / prc, in north korea and apartheid south africa by their own governments, in khmer rouge Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, by Israelis and Palestinians against each other in Israel and the Palestinian Authority Territory, by assad in Syria, by burma against the Rhohingya and by the prc against the Uyghurs of xinjiang province. Governments in Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic and Slovakia as well as the drumpf / trump-pence administration with the republican party in America are embracing and tolerating fascism and neo-nazis, atrocities are sure to follow. World history keeps repeating itself and some time it is going to go too far and be the death of all humanity. From the Washington Post and Al Jazeera
Auschwitz survivors warn of rising anti-Semitism 75 years on
By
Jan. 27, 2020 at 3:13 a.m. EST
Some visited the site, now a memorial museum, on the eve of the anniversary. When asked by reporters for their reflections, they were eager to share their stories, hopeful that their message will spread.
“We would like that the next generation know what we went through, and it should never happen again,” said 91-year-old David Marks, his voice cracking. He lost 35 members of his immediate and extended family after they all arrived in Auschwitz from their village in Romania.
“A dictator doesn’t come up from one day to the other,” Marks said, saying it happens in “micro steps.”
“If we don’t watch it, one day you wake up and it’s too late,” he added.
Most of the 1.1 million people murdered by the Nazi German forces at the camp were Jewish, but other Poles, Russians and Roma, or Gypsies, were imprisoned there. Some of the Polish survivors walked with Polish President Andrzej Duda through the camp’s gate Monday wearing striped scarves that recalled the prison garb they wore more than 75 years ago.
Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945.
World leaders gathered in Jerusalem last week to mark the anniversary in what many saw as a competing observance. Among them were Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, French President Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Prince Charles.
Politics intruded on that event, with Duda boycotting it in protest after Putin claimed that Poland played a role in triggering World War II. Duda had wanted a chance to speak before or after Putin to defend his nation’s record in face of those false accusations, but he was not given a speaking slot in Jerusalem.
Duda said Monday that he felt that in Jerusalem, “Polish participation in the epic fight against the Nazis was ignored.”
“I want to stress that the Poles fought for the liberty of the entire world and many Polish citizens fell in the battle for liberty in the war against the Nazis,” Duda said. “Our fallen are etched in the annals of Polish history and we remember and honor them and expect others to do the same.”
Among those attending Monday’s observances at Auschwitz, which is located in southern Poland, a region under German occupation during the war, were German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier,Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.
Rivlin recalled the strong connection that Israel shares with Poland, which welcomed Jews for centuries. It became home to Europe’s largest population of Jews — and later the center of Germany’s destruction of that community.
“The glorious history of the Jews in Poland, the prosperity of which the Jewish community has enjoyed throughout history, along with the difficult events that have taken place on this earth, connect the Jewish people and the State of Israel, inextricably, with Poland and the Polish people,” Rivlin said while standing alongside Duda.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan was guided through the camp by museum director Piotr Cywinski and viewed a plaque that includes the name of his city after it recently pledged a contribution of 300,000 pounds ($391,000) for the site’s preservation.
Organizers of the event in Poland, the Auschwitz-Birkenau state memorial museum and the World Jewish Congress, have sought to keep the spotlight on survivors.
“This is about survivors. It’s not about politics,” Lauder said Sunday as he went to the death camp with several of them.
Lauder warned that leaders must do more to fight anti-Semitism, including by passing new laws to fight it.
On the eve of the commemorations, survivors, many leaning on their children and grandchildren for support, walked through the place where they had been brought in on cattle cars and suffered hunger and illness and came close to death. They said they were there to remember, to share their histories with others, and to make a gesture of defiance toward those who had sought their destruction.
For some, it is also the burial ground for their parents and grandparents, and they will be saying kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.
“I have no graves to go to and I know my parents were murdered here and burned. So this is how I pay homage to them,” said Yvonne Engelman, a 92-year-old Australian who was joined by three more generations now scattered around the globe.
She recalled being brought in from a ghetto in what was then Czechoslovakia by cattle car, being stripped of her clothes, shaved and put in a gas chamber. By some miracle, the gas chamber that day did not work, and she later survived slave labor and a death march.
A 96-year-old survivor, Jeanette Spiegel, was 20 when she was brought to Auschwitz, where she spent nine months. Today she lives in New York and is fearful of rising anti-Semitic violence in the United States.
“I think they pick on the Jews because we are such a small minority and it is easy to pick on us,” she said, fighting back tears. “Young people should understand that nothing is for sure, that some terrible things can happen and they have to be very careful. And that, God forbid, what happened to the Jewish people then should never be repeated.”
In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron paid his respects at the city’s Shoah Memorial and warned about rising hate crimes in France, which increased 27% last year.
“That anti-Semitism is coming back is not the Jewish people’s problem: It’s all our problem -- it’s the nation’s problem,” Macron said.
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Associated Press writer Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed.
For more stories by The Associated Press on Auschwitz, go to https://apnews.com/Auschwitz
The headline below for the Al Jazeera report on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is the same as the Washington Post's headline. Both ran the same story from the AP but Al Jazeera included more pictures and links to other stories on the commemoration, see below....
Auschwitz survivors warn of rising anti-Semitism 75 years on
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in the camp's gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease.
![Survivors carry a wreath as they arrive to attend a ceremony at the 'death wall' at the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp, Auschwitz [Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/1/27/f5a8658853a34140b11bb22610f32b3f_18.jpg)
Survivors carry a wreath as they arrive to attend a ceremony at the 'death wall' at the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp, Auschwitz [Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters]
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Holocaust survivor Renee Salt arrive to attend a plaque unveiling following London's financial support of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation [Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters]
Muslim leaders visit Auschwitz prior to liberation anniversary
The delegation included 62 Muslims, including 25 prominent religious leaders from more than two dozen countries.
![Mohammad al-Issa led prayers at Auschwitz as Muslim leaders remembered the atrocities of the Holocaust [Courtesy: Auschwitz Memorial]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/1/23/cdbf7bd1a53f49f49278d6b020cd6b7e_18.jpg)
Mohammad al-Issa led prayers at Auschwitz as Muslim leaders remembered the atrocities of the Holocaust [Courtesy: Auschwitz Memorial]
The interfaith visit came four days before the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by Soviet forces.
It was led by the secretary-general of the Muslim World League, Mohammad al-Issa, who called it "both a sacred duty and a profound honour."
The Mecca-based organisation, which aims to present Islam's "tolerant principles", posted images of the visit to its social media feeds.
"The unconscionable crimes to which we bear witness today are truly crimes against humanity. That is to say, a violation of us all, an affront to all of God’s children," said al-Issa.
The delegation included 62 Muslims, including 25 prominent religious leaders from more than two dozen countries, as well as members of the American Jewish Committee.
A post of the Muslim World League's Twitter feed showed Jews and Muslims praying side by side at the site in southern Poland.
Al-Issa's outreach to Jewish organisations coincides with a broader alignment of interests and ties emerging between the Arab Gulf states and Israel, which share a common foe in Iran.
On Friday, members of the delegation will visit the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and attend Muslim and Jewish religious services there.
Meanwhile, world leaders voiced alarm at resurgent anti-Semitism on Thursday as they gathered at Israel's national Holocaust Memorial to mark the liberation of the Nazi death camp.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Vice President Mike Pence also castigated Iran in their speeches to the World Holocaust Forum, accusing it of rabid anti-Semitism and of seeking Israel's destruction.
Leaders of Russia and France looked closer to home in lamenting the killing of six million Jews in Europe during World War II by the Nazis and pledging to combat rising anti-Semitism.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the conference at the Yad Vashem memorial centre that he bowed his head in "deepest sorrow [for] the worst crime in the history of humanity" committed by his countrymen.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
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