Survivors, Royalty, Presidents Mark Auschwitz Liberation 70 Years On

[Purveyor]

Source: Agence France-Presse

AFPSunday, Jan 25, 2015

WARSAW - Seventy years after it was liberated, 300 Auschwitz survivors - most now in their nineties - will on Tuesday return to the former Nazi death camp, the site of the largest single number of murders committed during World War II.

Between 1940-45 some 1.1 million people, including one million Jews, perished in the twin death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau created by Nazi Germany in Oswiecim, southern Poland.

Liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945, the camps have become an enduring symbol of the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of six million European Jews.

"It is the last big anniversary that we can commemorate" with a large group of survivors, said Piotr Cywinski, director of the museum at the site of the former death camp.

"Their voices became the most important warning against the human capacity for extreme humiliation, contempt and genocide.


Read more: http://news.asiaone.com/news/world/survivors-royalty-presidents-mark-auschwitz-liberation-70-years

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[Hekate]

1. To the memory of people on both sides of my husband's family...

Few returned from that man-made Hell. Never let it be forgotten -- or minimized.

[JI7]

2. 70 years is not that long ago

to think something so horrible happened just in the last century .

[7962]

3. Never forget what can happen when evil is left alone. nt

[COLGATE4]

4. Never forget

[appalachiablue]

5. A college friend's parents were at Auschwitz. He mentioned a little, they had arm

tattoos, were Hungarian I think & luckily survived. Looking back I remember several other college friends whose parents were involved in the war but we never really discussed it, or knew much then & were young & busy. I hope to catch up with them now. I knew a wonderful woman through work who was connected to the Modigliani family in Italy who left Europe for the States. My field is history & art museums including positions at the Smithsonian & National Archives where the US govt. holds the Captured German Records that are a vast resource of war material.

At war's end in 1945 the Brit. govt. commissioned soldiers at the camps Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz & Dachau to film them as an historical record; Alfred Hitchcock and other movie people were involved in the production. The movie they made has never been shown before, but will be aired in the US, this Monday, Jan. 26 on HBO TV, 9pm et.

The renewed Hitchcock film is covered in the Guardian and the Telegraph UK news which has now interviews of survivors like three elderly Jewish women who were children at the time & the harrowing ordeals they went through. One remarked how she never thought she would see the rise of anti-Semitism again. Hard to believe it was only 70 years ago. My father was a 24 year old 1st lieutenant in AAA (Anti Aircraft Artillery) in the 7th Army who served in the Rhineland Campaign, the Liberation of Dachau in April, 1945 and the Army of Occupation. We can never forget.

[FunkyLeprechaun]

7. I saw the movie

It aired on Channel 4 in the UK last night.

It is very harrowing and some parts very graphic.

We should never forget.

[appalachiablue]

10. Right. I forgot the UK Channel but knew it was aired there of course. I've read about the graphic

nature, the real horror, why it wasn't released for so many years. I've come into contact with historical films & photos at institutions and Archives & saw artifacts like shoes, eyeglasses & hair at the National Holocaust Museum in DC where a colleague worked. Appalling but the reality we must face & remember.

[Rhinodawg]

6. NEVER AGAIN !

Thank you for posting this...very important.

[father founding]

8. ????

Why would anybody wan t to go back there ?

[Aristus]

9. If for no other reason than to remember the people who were murdered.

And to stand up in public and say: "This happened. No matter how many people may try to deny it, or minimize it, this happened. And it must never happen again."

[Pooka Fey]

11. Never forget. Never again.