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Source: Associated Press... Tuesday's commemorations at Auschwitz include a wreath-laying ceremony and prayers at the foot of the former camp's main memorial, which stands between the twisted ruins of two crematoria.
Events elsewhere include a speech to the German parliament by President Horst Koehler and a ceremony at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin.
As aging Holocaust survivors grow frailer and fewer in number, Auschwitz-Birkenau — established by the Nazis in occupied Poland — is in such a state of disrepair that its preservation is under threat ...
Germany on Monday praised Polish efforts to preserve the site and promised to help fund them. It did not cite a figure ... Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hnzvZ-l3FeR-7aVTR91Z-i9DhwfAD95VCJ9G0
Horror remembered ... ON THIS DAY in 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland. And so the great evil began to draw its final, shuddering breath. On April 30, Hitler would commit suicide. On May 7, Germany would surrender unconditionally. Under the 12-year Nazi reign of terror, by some counts, nearly 21 million people had died. That such a mass insanity could take over a European nation so completely is a testimony to the power of evil and the black depths to which the human heart can fall. Many segments of German society participated in the Nazi plan to eliminate Jews especially, but also gypsies, Poles, Communists, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses the disabled, and anyone who dissented. From the government agencies that provided the Nazis names and addresses of Jews, to the doctors who performed cruel experiments on prisoners, to the businessmen who bid on contracts to build crematoriums, to the Ph.Ds who discussed with Hitler how to speed up the Final Solution, to the average German who watched neighbors disappear and smelled the stench of the ovens and did nothing, virtually the entire nation was morally deranged. To think that it didn't happen is another form of insanity ... http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2009/012009/01272009/441699Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Urgent Need of Renovation ... Buildings of the former German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau are in need of urgent repair. Walls in the wooden barracks are rickety, those in the brick cells are cracking. But the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum cannot afford a major renovation, whose cost is estimated at 120 million. Rzeczpospolita reported on this yesterday. But in mid-January, Władysław Bartoszewski, president of the International Auschwitz Council, signed a notary deed appointing the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. Among its statutory goals is seeking funds for the renovation of the camp site, buildings and ruins ... 'A stable inflow of funds would allow, for the first time in the Museum's history, realistic longer-term planning of conservation works on a site counting almost 200 hectares, on which are located 155 objects and 300 ruins. Excluding archives and collections,' say Piotr M.A. Cywiński, director of the Museum. 'The sums we need for conservation are very substantial. I hope we'll eventually get to a point where the foundation's annual yield reaches 3-5 million. We'll do everything for the former camp site to be available and comprehensible for visitors 20 or 30 years from now' ... http://wyborcza.pl/1,86871,6205303,Auschwitz_Birkenau_Museum_in_Urgent_Need_of_Renovation.htmlCash crisis threat to Auschwitz Two experts on Auschwitz argue for and against the idea that the former Nazi death camp should be allowed to crumble away. ROBERT JAN VAN PELT, HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR ... In his autobiographical novel The Long Voyage (1963), former Buchenwald inmate Jorge Semprun considered what ought to happen with the remains of that camp after the death of the last survivor, "when there will no longer be any real memory of this, only the memory of memories related by those who will never know (as one knows the acidity of a lemon, the feel of wool, the softness of a shoulder) what all this really was." Semprun hoped that grass, roots and brambles would be allowed to take over the camp, destroying the remainder of the fences, barracks and crematorium, effacing "this camp constructed by men" ... WLADYSLAW BARTOSZEWSKI, CHAIRMAN OF THE INTERNATIONAL AUSCHWITZ COUNCIL ... The ruins of crematoria and gas chambers in Birkenau, the empty bunks in barracks, the dark cells in Block 11 and the Wall of Death - all of them will cry out. Therefore, it is meaningful to save stones, ruins, and buildings, even if the price is high. It lies in the nature of man that when no tangible traces remain, events of the past fall into oblivion ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7827534.stmCzech EU Presidency marks International Holocaust Day, January 27 01:36 Tue 27 Jan 2009 - Clive Leviev-Sawyer The Holocaust has to serve forever as a warning of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice, and the European Union rejects any denial of the Holocaust, the Czech Republic – currently the holder of the rotating presidency of the EU – said in a statement marking International Holocaust Day, January 27. “On behalf of the EU the Presidency of the Council invites all countries to honour the memory of all Holocaust victims and to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau on the International Holocaust Memorial Day,” the statement said ... http://www.sofiaecho.com/article/czech-eu-presidency-marks-international-holocaust-day-january-27/id_34233/catid_66Slovakia Backs International Holocaust Remembrance Day Bratislava, January 27 (TASR) - Slovakia has joined the world in marking the 64th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, the foreign ministry said on January 27, a day that was designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the UN General Assembly on November 1, 2005. Slovakia unequivocally supports efforts to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and its victims and flatly rejects any doubts cast on it. It confirms its stance via its active membership of the Task Force for International Co-operation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF), said the ministry ... http://www.tasr.sk/30.axd?k=20090127TBB0012727 January - Holocaust Remembrance Day 2009-01-27 10:32:00 Statement by Spain’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Co-operation, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Chairman-in-office of the Committee of Ministers, Lluís Maria De Puig, President of the Parliamentary Assembly, and Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe Strasbourg, 26.01.2009 - “The Holocaust is one of the darkest periods in the history of Europe. It will stay engraved forever in the memory of humankind. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is an occasion to pay tribute to the victims and to reinforce our campaign against the racist hatred which motivated the Holocaust. An essential part of this campaign is to teach younger generations about the Holocaust. This is a difficult and delicate task for teachers and for parents. How do we explain human suffering on such horrific scale? How do we explain that, only a lifetime ago, millions of human beings were killed by other human beings? How do we talk about such an unspeakable crime? Yet we must do so, and we will do so, because future generations must know about the past in order to protect themselves from a similar fate in future ... http://www.hrea.org/index.php?base_id=2&language_id=1&headline_id=8576| 27.01.2009 | 10:00 UTC Germany's Central Council of Jews boycotts main Holocaust ceremony The Central Council of Jews in Germany is boycotting an official parliamentary Holocaust ceremony marking the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in 1945. The council's general secretary, Stephan Kramer, said in an interview with the German daily Der Tagesspiegel that .... more than six decades after the holocaust, hostilities in the Middle East were fuelling creeping anti-Semitism at the centre of German society ... German President Horst Koehler will give the main speech at the Holocaust ceremony in Berlin, which will be attended by the majority of Germany's political class, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/function/0,,12215_cid_3978688,00.htmlGerman Anti-Semitism Rising, Jewish Leader Says in Tagesspiegel By Brett Neely Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- ... The council, which represents Germany’s more than 100,000- member Jewish community, received about 40 percent more hate e-mail a week than usual during the recent conflict in Gaza, said Kramer, as quoted in an interview with the newspaper. A tenth of the 300 weekly messages were explicit death threats directed at council members, he was cited as saying. Kramer, who is the Central Council’s secretary general, was also quoted as saying that no members of his organization would attend today’s annual parliament session commemorating Holocaust victims on the 64th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp ... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=arkcqwye0r1I&refer=germanyJan 27, 2009 10:16 | Updated Jan 27, 2009 12:31 Swedish city cancels Holocaust event A northern Swedish city has decided to cancel a planned Holocaust Memorial Day torchlight procession due to the recent IDF offensive in Gaza, it was reported Tuesday. The official reason given for the decision, made by the municipal board and local church in Lulea, was safety concerns, but Bo Nordin, a clergyman and spokesman for the church, cited the war in Gaza. "It feels uneasy to have a torchlight procession to remember the victims of the Holocaust at this time," Nordin told Swedish National Radio. "We have been preoccupied and grief-stricken by the war in Gaza and it would feel just feel odd with a large ceremony about the Holocaust." The decision drew fierce criticism from various organizations as well as residents of the city, and a defiant group of Lulea locals has decided to hold the torchlight procession anyway ... http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1232643759716&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFullUndiluted truth of Holocaust must be recalled to educate By Roman Kent For the Journal-Constitution Tuesday, January 27, 2009 ... This year, when I speak at Yad Vashem, a memorial for those killed in Jerusalem, my message will continue to emphasize that our children and future generations must be taught what happens when prejudice and hatred are allowed to flourish. It is my conviction that only through education can a calamity such as the Holocaust and the atrocities in Darfur, Biafra, Kosovo and other countries be prevented from occurring again. Tolerance cannot be assumed; it has to be taught. And when I speak at Emory University next month, I hope to impart to the students that the antidote to intolerance and hatred is education. What worries me is that the public is learning about the Holocaust from TV and Hollywood, media that often dilute the meaning of the Holocaust and incorrectly depict the actual events. Most filmmakers will tell the more palatable, yet unrepresentative, parts of the story. They risk trivializing the horror and reducing the unspeakable to the mundane ... Roman Kent survived three concentration camps ...http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2009/01/27/kented0127.html |
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