Barbie
01-27-2005, 11:48 PM
World marks anniversary of Auschwitz liberation
"Today they are saying a lot because of the anniversary, but tomorrow they will forget," he said. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050127.wcamp0127_3/BNStory/International/)
Brzezinka, Poland — Snowflakes swirled around the crematoriums and barbed wire of Auschwitz, and a shrill train whistle pierced the silence as frail survivors and humbled world leaders remembered the victims of the Holocaust on Thursday, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.
Candles flickered in the darkening winter gloom of the sprawling site, which Israeli President Moshe Katsav called "the capital of the kingdom of death."
During the Second World War, 1.5 million people — mostly Jews — were killed at the site. Others who perished there included Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and political opponents of the Nazis.
The haunting commemoration was held at the place where new arrivals stumbled out of cattle cars and were met by Nazi doctors who chose a few to be worked to death while the rest were sent immediately to gas chambers. Others died of starvation, exhaustion, beatings and disease.
"It seems if you listen hard enough, you can still hear the outcry of horror of the murdered people," Mr. Katsav said. "When I walk the ground of the concentration camps, I fear that I am walking on the ashes of the victims."
As night fell and the ceremony ended with a locomotive whistle blaring over loudspeakers, a half-mile of train tracks leading from the front gate to the crematoriums were set ablaze in a pyrotechnic display — two flaming rails amid the snow.
The 30 leaders, including U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, Presidents Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Jacques Chirac of France, placed candles shielded in blue lanterns on a low stone memorial. Soldiers of a Polish honor guard stood stiffly in the freezing wind. New Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko gently set down his candle and made the sign of the cross.
Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson was representing Canada.
Germany's President Horst Koehler placed a candle but didn't speak, in recognition of his country's responsibility for the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler's attempt to wipe out Europe's Jews. In all, some 6 million Jews died in the network of camps, while several million non-Jews also perished.
Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and neighboring Birkenau — the occupiers' names for Polish Oswiecim and Brzezinka — on Jan. 27, 1945.
At the ceremony, young girls brought blankets to survivors sitting in the cold.
Auschwitz survivor Gabi Neumann, 68, traveled from his home in Israel and held up a poster that bore the words, "Stop it before it happens again" and the yellow stars of the European Union flag distorted to resemble a swastika.
"I made this poster because anti-Semitism is a big problem in Europe," said Neumann, who was an 8-year-old boy when he was freed from the camp. Originally from Slovakia, he lost a grandmother at Auschwitz.
"But she has no grave," he said. "I am happy there is snow here because it keeps me from standing on her ashes."
Mr. Putin compared the Nazis with modern terrorists. "Today we shall not only remember the past but also be aware of all the threats of the modern world," he said. "Terrorism is among them, and it is no less dangerous and cunning than fascism."
Earlier in Krakow, Mr. Cheney noted that the Holocaust did not happen in some far-off place but "in the heart of the civilized world."
"The story of the camps shows that evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted," he said.
People at the ceremony expressed concern over recent incidents such as a walkout from an Auschwitz commemoration by far-right local legislators in Germany, and a statement from far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, who minimized the brutality of Nazi rule during the occupation by German troops. He said it "was not particularly inhuman, even if there were a few blunders."
Camp survivor Franczisek Jozefiak, 80, said the world still needed reminding.
"Today I'm remembering my father, gassed here. I'm remembering the atrocious things they did to us here," said Mr. Jozefiak, who is from Krakow.
The Nazi guards lined them up and told some to go right, others left, he said. Jozefiak went left and his father went right and was taken to the gas chamber.
"The message today is: No more Auschwitz," he said. "But the world has learned nothing so far — you see they are fighting and killing each other everywhere in the world.
"Today they are saying a lot because of the anniversary, but tomorrow they will forget," he said.
________________________________________________
Please don't forget
Some facts:
The complex contained three camps and at least 36 sub-camps which were built outside the town of Oswiecim, on an isolated 40 sq km site, between 1940 and 1942.
May 20, 1940 - German forces occupying Poland set up Auschwitz I in an old Polish army barracks which later served as the administrative centre for the whole complex. It was the site of the deaths of around 70,000 Polish intellectuals and Soviet prisoners of war.
June 14, 1940 - The first transport of Polish political prisoners from Tarnow arrives at Auschwitz. Among the 728 Poles there were a number of Jews. The entrance to Auschwitz I is marked with the sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes you free).
Sept 3, 1941 - First victims gassed to death in Auschwitz using Zyklon-B are 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 Jews from the infirmary.
Oct 1941 - Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, which could accommodate over 100,000 inmates opens. It would become the main site of mass killings.
Jan 1942 - Four large gas chambers added to Auschwitz II camp, capable of disposing of about 2000 a day people per day. Three more extermination camps opened to step up killings. Auschwitz III supplied forced labour for the nearby I.G Farben plant.
Jan 1942 - Senior Nazis meet at the Wannsee conference to co-ordinate the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" and to agree on a definition of "Jew".
March-June 1943 - New crematoria put into operation at Auschwitz-Birkenau. By 1944, 6000 a day were being killed.
Nov-Dec 1944 - Germans dismantle, bury and plant over Auschwitz's gas chambers and crematoria.
Jan 1945 - Auschwitz evacuated as the Soviet Red Army advances, many prisoners killed in camp, 58,000 compelled to leave and most die during forced march.
Jan 27, 1945 - Soviet soldiers enter Auschwitz and free the remaining 7000 prisoners.
About 200,000 inmates of the camp from 1940-45 survived.
Out of a total of about 7000 guards at Auschwitz, including 170 female staff, 750 were prosecuted and punished once Nazi Germany was defeated.
(Sources: Reuters/Oxford Companion to the Second World War/BBC)
"Today they are saying a lot because of the anniversary, but tomorrow they will forget," he said. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050127.wcamp0127_3/BNStory/International/)
Brzezinka, Poland — Snowflakes swirled around the crematoriums and barbed wire of Auschwitz, and a shrill train whistle pierced the silence as frail survivors and humbled world leaders remembered the victims of the Holocaust on Thursday, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.
Candles flickered in the darkening winter gloom of the sprawling site, which Israeli President Moshe Katsav called "the capital of the kingdom of death."
During the Second World War, 1.5 million people — mostly Jews — were killed at the site. Others who perished there included Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and political opponents of the Nazis.
The haunting commemoration was held at the place where new arrivals stumbled out of cattle cars and were met by Nazi doctors who chose a few to be worked to death while the rest were sent immediately to gas chambers. Others died of starvation, exhaustion, beatings and disease.
"It seems if you listen hard enough, you can still hear the outcry of horror of the murdered people," Mr. Katsav said. "When I walk the ground of the concentration camps, I fear that I am walking on the ashes of the victims."
As night fell and the ceremony ended with a locomotive whistle blaring over loudspeakers, a half-mile of train tracks leading from the front gate to the crematoriums were set ablaze in a pyrotechnic display — two flaming rails amid the snow.
The 30 leaders, including U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, Presidents Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Jacques Chirac of France, placed candles shielded in blue lanterns on a low stone memorial. Soldiers of a Polish honor guard stood stiffly in the freezing wind. New Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko gently set down his candle and made the sign of the cross.
Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson was representing Canada.
Germany's President Horst Koehler placed a candle but didn't speak, in recognition of his country's responsibility for the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler's attempt to wipe out Europe's Jews. In all, some 6 million Jews died in the network of camps, while several million non-Jews also perished.
Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and neighboring Birkenau — the occupiers' names for Polish Oswiecim and Brzezinka — on Jan. 27, 1945.
At the ceremony, young girls brought blankets to survivors sitting in the cold.
Auschwitz survivor Gabi Neumann, 68, traveled from his home in Israel and held up a poster that bore the words, "Stop it before it happens again" and the yellow stars of the European Union flag distorted to resemble a swastika.
"I made this poster because anti-Semitism is a big problem in Europe," said Neumann, who was an 8-year-old boy when he was freed from the camp. Originally from Slovakia, he lost a grandmother at Auschwitz.
"But she has no grave," he said. "I am happy there is snow here because it keeps me from standing on her ashes."
Mr. Putin compared the Nazis with modern terrorists. "Today we shall not only remember the past but also be aware of all the threats of the modern world," he said. "Terrorism is among them, and it is no less dangerous and cunning than fascism."
Earlier in Krakow, Mr. Cheney noted that the Holocaust did not happen in some far-off place but "in the heart of the civilized world."
"The story of the camps shows that evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted," he said.
People at the ceremony expressed concern over recent incidents such as a walkout from an Auschwitz commemoration by far-right local legislators in Germany, and a statement from far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, who minimized the brutality of Nazi rule during the occupation by German troops. He said it "was not particularly inhuman, even if there were a few blunders."
Camp survivor Franczisek Jozefiak, 80, said the world still needed reminding.
"Today I'm remembering my father, gassed here. I'm remembering the atrocious things they did to us here," said Mr. Jozefiak, who is from Krakow.
The Nazi guards lined them up and told some to go right, others left, he said. Jozefiak went left and his father went right and was taken to the gas chamber.
"The message today is: No more Auschwitz," he said. "But the world has learned nothing so far — you see they are fighting and killing each other everywhere in the world.
"Today they are saying a lot because of the anniversary, but tomorrow they will forget," he said.
________________________________________________
Please don't forget
Some facts:
The complex contained three camps and at least 36 sub-camps which were built outside the town of Oswiecim, on an isolated 40 sq km site, between 1940 and 1942.
May 20, 1940 - German forces occupying Poland set up Auschwitz I in an old Polish army barracks which later served as the administrative centre for the whole complex. It was the site of the deaths of around 70,000 Polish intellectuals and Soviet prisoners of war.
June 14, 1940 - The first transport of Polish political prisoners from Tarnow arrives at Auschwitz. Among the 728 Poles there were a number of Jews. The entrance to Auschwitz I is marked with the sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes you free).
Sept 3, 1941 - First victims gassed to death in Auschwitz using Zyklon-B are 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 Jews from the infirmary.
Oct 1941 - Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, which could accommodate over 100,000 inmates opens. It would become the main site of mass killings.
Jan 1942 - Four large gas chambers added to Auschwitz II camp, capable of disposing of about 2000 a day people per day. Three more extermination camps opened to step up killings. Auschwitz III supplied forced labour for the nearby I.G Farben plant.
Jan 1942 - Senior Nazis meet at the Wannsee conference to co-ordinate the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" and to agree on a definition of "Jew".
March-June 1943 - New crematoria put into operation at Auschwitz-Birkenau. By 1944, 6000 a day were being killed.
Nov-Dec 1944 - Germans dismantle, bury and plant over Auschwitz's gas chambers and crematoria.
Jan 1945 - Auschwitz evacuated as the Soviet Red Army advances, many prisoners killed in camp, 58,000 compelled to leave and most die during forced march.
Jan 27, 1945 - Soviet soldiers enter Auschwitz and free the remaining 7000 prisoners.
About 200,000 inmates of the camp from 1940-45 survived.
Out of a total of about 7000 guards at Auschwitz, including 170 female staff, 750 were prosecuted and punished once Nazi Germany was defeated.
(Sources: Reuters/Oxford Companion to the Second World War/BBC)