Over 200 Holocaust survivors and delegates from more than 50 countries gathered at the site of the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday to mark the 75th anniversary of the camp's liberation by Soviet troops.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier met with three survivors in Berlin in the morning before traveling together with them to the site of the camp in Poland.
Hermann Höllenreiter, Peter Gardosch and Pavel Tussig were all deported to Auschwitz as children. They were guests of honor at the German president's official residence, Bellevue Palace in Berlin.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Buedenbender speak to Peter Gardosch, Hermann Josef Hoellenreiner and Pavel Taussig
The president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, told DW that "speeches are not enough to stop anti-Semitism." He blamed the internet for spreading hate against Jews, and called for greater legislation to police hate crime.
"We have to stop that. Unfortunately most governments just talk, they don't do it," he said.
'Truth about the Holocaust must not die'
Polish President Andrzej Duda hosted the commemoration, although the main speeches at the event were to be delivered by Holocaust survivors.
"People were seen like sheep to be slaughtered," Duda said in his opening remarks, referring to the former concentration camp as a "factory of death."
"At no other place was extermination carried out in a similar manner," he said, calling the Holocaust the most appalling crime in history.
"The truth about the Holocaust must not die," Duda added. "I have the privilege and honour of renewing Poland's obligation ... to nurture the memory of and guard the truth about what happened here."
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Commemorations of Auschwitz liberation take place around the world
Returning to Auschwitz to remember
A solemn commemoration ceremony was held on the site of the former extermination camp, where some 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered by German Nazi forces between 1940 and 1945. Some 200 survivors of the camp attended, many coming from abroad. Some told of the atrocities they saw and suffered. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945.
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Commemorations of Auschwitz liberation take place around the world
Carrying a burden of guilt
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was among those attending Monday's ceremony, accompanied by his wife, Elke Büdenbender. The gate to the camp seen behind him bears the words "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") — words that must have seemed like the bitterest mockery to those imprisoned at the camp.
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Commemorations of Auschwitz liberation take place around the world
Honoring the victims
Steinmeier laid a wreath at the "Death Wall," a reconstruction of the wall against which thousands of people were shot dead by SS men from 1941 to 1943. Poles, Russians and Roma, Sinti and homosexuals were also among those murdered at the camp under the Nazis' remorseless regime.
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Commemorations of Auschwitz liberation take place around the world
Widespread horrors
The former Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald near Weimar was also the site of a ceremony for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday. Buchenwald was one of the first and largest concentration camps in Germany. Prisoners included Jews, Poles, Russians, mentally ill and disabled people, political prisoners and prisoners of war. More than 56,000 people died at the camp.
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Commemorations of Auschwitz liberation take place around the world
Tiny memorials of horror
German Family Minister Franziska Giffey joined school pupils in Berlin to lay flowers on "Stolpersteine" ("stumbling stones"), small brass plaques set in the ground to commemorate individual people deported, persecuted or murdered under the Nazis. The project was initiated by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992. They are mostly located near the victim's last voluntary place of residency or work
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Commemorations of Auschwitz liberation take place around the world
A ghetto survivor
Frida Reizman survived a ghetto in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, that was set up by the Nazis. She lit a candle at a ceremony in Belarus in remembrance those who didn't make it. Some 800,000 Belarusian Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Those in the Minsk ghettos lived in extremely poor conditions and were often forced to work in factories. Many ended up being murdered in concentration camps.
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Commemorations of Auschwitz liberation take place around the world
Commemoration in Sweden
Sweden's neutral status in World War II meant it could help rescue Jews from Norway and Denmark who were facing Nazi persecution. Almost the entire Danish Jewish community also found refuge in Sweden, and many Hungarian Jews were saved as well by diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. But the country did not always have a good record: In the 1930s, its immigration policy was not favorable to Jewish refugees.
Author: Timothy Jones
Read more: Auschwitz's harrowing history
The official ceremony is taking place in front of the infamous "Gate of Death," which victims passed through before being murdered.
Fight against anti-Semitism
Among the survivors are representatives from the United States, Canada, Israel, Australia, and several European countries. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin is also present, less than a week after hosting the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem, which President Steinmeier also attended.
"Today we hear voices which spread hate, on the internet, on the street and in the centers 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," Rivlin told reporters at a venue near the camp, ahead of the ceremony.
Royalty from Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands are in attendance, as well as a Russian delegation. The Soviet Russian Red Army liberated the camp in January 1945.
The commemoration is taking place amid concerns of rising anti-Semitism in Europe and around the world.
Read more: Opinion: Do Jews have a future in Europe?
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The diary of an Auschwitz survivor
Deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau
When the Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944, the Jewish population lost their rights, were persecuted, deported and finally murdered. Sheindi Ehrenwald, 14 at the time, took notes about it all, including her deportation and life in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp — which she wrote at the risk of her life. Almost her entire family was killed by the Nazis.
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The diary of an Auschwitz survivor
Long-gone days
The photo above, probably taken about 1935, is from a happier time in the lives of the Ehrenwald family, who were merchants and part of the large Jewish community in the town of Galanta near the Austrian border. The man in the foreground is Sheindi's father Lipot (Leopold) Ehrenwald, who died in Auschwitz.
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The diary of an Auschwitz survivor
Forced labor in a German arms factory
On arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the newcomers who were not immediately sent to their deaths were forced to work. Sheindi was transported to a German weapons factory in Lower Silesia.
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The diary of an Auschwitz survivor
Notes on index cards
Sheindi secretly transferred her handwritten notes to index cards thrown out by the arms factory. She managed to hide and save them for the 14 months before liberation. Today, her diary is a rare testimony to that time.
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The diary of an Auschwitz survivor
Exhibition for 75th anniversary of liberation
"Punishment at roll call" is the title of a watercolor by Zofia Rozensztrauch, painted in 1945, that shows the brutality of German guards in the concentration camp. The painting is also on display in the exhibition of Berlin's Deutsches Historisches Museum to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp 75 years ago.
Author: Stefan Dege (db)
"When you have a small infection on your finger, you do not wait until your entire hand has gangrene to fight the infection. The same is true for anti-Semitism," Poland's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich said before the ceremony.
More than 1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland before it was liberated in January 1945.
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lc,ed/rt (Reuters, dpa)
