Off the wire
• Russian leaders condemn attempts to revise World War II history  • Mozambican gov't and Renamo talks in deadlock on integration of fighters  • Latvia condemns killing of Japanese national by IS militants  • Sri Lankan president seeks consensus on national issues  • Malta disagrees with Greek debt write-off: Maltese FinMin  • Niger, Algeria to boost counter-terrorism cooperation  • Urgent: Oil prices drop amid ample supplies  • Spanish stock market rises 1.08 pct, closes at 10,696  • LME base metals rise on Monday  • Roundup: Radical left SYRIZA leader Tsipras sworn in as Greek PM  
You are here: 　 Home

300 former Auschwitz prisoners gather to mark camp liberation anniversary

Xinhua, January 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

Some 300 former prisoners of the KL Auschwitz Concentration Camp arrived on Monday to participate in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the camp's liberation on Tuesday.

The celebrations will host representatives of 42 countries, including presidents, prime ministers and crowned heads. They will include speeches by former prisoners and the placing of flower wreaths under the execution wall.

Former prisoner, Alina Dabrowska, 80, told a press conference on Monday that she spoke on behalf on all Holocaust survivors when she says such a war should never repeat itself.

She added even those who did not experience the horrors of the Auschwitz camp could learn more about those times through the commemorative events.

The Auschwitz Museum said more than a hundred former prisoners came from Poland and a similar number from Israel. The museum's director Piotr Cywinski said the former prisoners' voices were the most powerful warning against the human capacity for extreme humiliation, contempt and genocide.

He added that soon the witnesses of those times would no longer exist, "therefore we, who were born after the world war, should carry on this monstrous knowledge."

The KL Auschwitz concentration camp was founded in 1940 by German Nazis. By 1942, more than 1.1 million Jews were killed there, including Poles, Romanians, Soviet captives and others.

The camp was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945 by the Red Army soldiers and afterwards became known as Holocaust Victims Memory Day. Endit