Roundup: Poland commemorates 70th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation
Xinhua, January 28, 2015 Adjust font size:
Poland solemnly commemorated the 70th anniversary of KL Auschwitz concentration camp liberation on Tuesday, with the participation of some 300 survivors and representatives of nearly 50 countries.
The anniversary date is also the International Holocaust Memorial Day.
On Monday, the survivors took part in a press conference. There were some 100 of them from Israel and a similar number of survivors from Poland. During celebrations they wore scarves with white and blue stripes, symbolizing the uniforms of camp prisoners.
On Tuesday before noon, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski together with the survivors put flowers under the Execution Wall nearby the infamous Block 11 of the Auschwitz camp.
They entered the territory of the camp through the main gate, the writing "Arbeit macht frei" above their heads. The president also took part in a Holy Mess.
The main celebrations took part nearby the gate of the former Auschwitz II Birkenau, where the Germans conducted mass extermination of the Jews in gas chambers.
Participants included presidents of Poland, Germany, Ukraine, France and Lithuania, as well as many other countries' diplomatic representatives, including a Russian delegation.
The Polish president said that Poland was the guard of the tragic memory about the Holocaust.
He condemned any manifestations of hatred, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
He reminded that exactly 70 years ago "the camp was liberated by the soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front of the Red Army", of whom "we still think with gratitude and respect".
Komorowski said that Auschwitz was a place, where European civilization fell, a place where systematically human dignity was taken from him.
He pointed out that it was a place, where "death industry" reduced man to a number, disposed him of his identity.
"Poland has been given the role of special depositary of the memory of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Holocaust," said the president, adding "The Nazis made Poland an eternal cemetery of Jews, put an end to centuries of Jewish presence on our land."
Three of the survivors made a speech during celebrations, sharing their traumatic experiences, including Roman Kent, who appealed to the nations of the whole world and their leaders for remembrance, in order to avoid such things happening again.
Tuesday's celebrations were ended up by common prayer. In about a kilometer distance from where Birkenau biggest gas chambers are located, and where the Germans took life of hundred thousand of Jews, a sound of kaddish, Jewish prayers for the passed away, could be heard.
After the prayers, the participants lit candles under the monument of Holocaust victims.
The camp was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945 by the Red Army soldiers of the former Soviet Union, the date which eventually became the Holocaust Victims Memory Day. Endit