EurActiv (27 January 2020)
World leaders join ageing Holocaust survivors in Poland on Monday (27 January) to mark 75 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops, amid concerns over a global resurgence of anti-Semitism.
More than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, perished in the camp’s gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease.
Set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland in 1940, at first to house Polish political prisoners, it became the largest of the extermination centres where Adolf Hitler’s plan to kill all Jews – the “Final Solution” – was put into practice.
Speaking before Monday’s ceremonies, David Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee, said groups ranging from far-right white supremacists to jihadis and the far-left were fuelling anti-Semitism worldwide.
“Jews in western Europe think twice before they wear a kippa, they think twice before they go to a synagogue, think twice before they enter a kosher supermarket,” he told Reuters.
A 2019 survey by the US-based Anti-Defamation League showed that about one in four Europeans harbour “pernicious and pervasive” attitudes towards Jews, compared with 19% of North Americans.
In Germany, 42% agreed that “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust”, it said. Two people were killed in a shooting near a synagogue in eastern Germany in October, in what officials called an anti-Semitic attack.
After visiting Auschwitz last week, Mohammed al-Issa, the head of a global Muslim missionary society, said governments and Muslim communities should do more to combat anti-Semitism.
“European countries should have stronger and more active laws that would criminalise anti-Semitism,” Al-Issa, secretary-general of the Mecca-based Muslim World League (MWL), told Reuters.
More than a dozen heads of state including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will take part in ceremonies starting at 3.30 p.m. (1430 GMT) at the “Gate of Death” where rail tracks led trains packed with victims into the camp.
The commemorations take place as Poland seeks to highlight its own suffering during World War Two, in which six million Poles, including three million Polish Jews, were killed and Warsaw was razed to the ground.
For many non-Jewish Poles, Auschwitz remains the place where the Nazis jailed and killed Polish resistance fighters, the intelligentsia, Roman Catholic priests and innocent civilians.
Critics say the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government is not doing enough to counter anti-Semitism and is instead focusing on what it sees as Polish heroism during the war and downplaying Jews’ claims to postwar restitution of property seized from them. PiS says the West fails to grasp the extent of the nation’s pain and bravery.
One survivor, a Jewish Pole, spoke about the need to remember Auschwitz.
“We need to do everything possible to keep this world from acquiring amnesia,” Benjamin Lesser said at the camp on Sunday. “It’s hard to believe civilised, cultured, educated people could become such monsters.”
According to the Russian press, Poland didn’t invite Russian President Vladimir Putin at the commemoration, although Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army. Putin however attended the 22 January commemoration in Jerusalem.
No comments yet.
- PETER M. TASE: OPENING OF WEF REGIONAL CENTER IN BAKU IS GREAT ACHIEVEMENT OF AZERBAIJANI GOV'T The Caucasus and Turkish-Armenian Relations 27.01.2020
- 31 JANUARY IS NEXT KEY DATE IN SLOVENIA-VS-CROATIA BORDER DISPUTE The Balkans 27.01.2020
- SOCAR INCREASES GAS EXPORTS TO GEORGIA The Caucasus and Turkish-Armenian Relations 27.01.2020
- WAR CRIMINALS STILL FREE TO RUN FOR OFFICE IN ELECTIONS IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA The Balkans 27.01.2020
- PASHINYAN: NO CONFLICT BETWEEN ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT, ARF DASHNAKTSUTYUN The Caucasus and Turkish-Armenian Relations 27.01.2020
-
Türk-Ermeni İlişkileri Üzerine Ömer Engin Lütem Konferansları 2023 -
Türk-Ermeni İlişkileri Üzerine Ömer Engin Lütem Konferansları 2022 -
RADİKAL ERMENİ UNSURLARCA GERÇEKLEŞTİRİLEN MEZALİMLER VE VANDALİZM -
PATRIOTISM PERVERTED -
MEN ARE LIKE THAT -
BAKÜ-TİFLİS-CEYHAN BORU HATTININ YAŞANAN TARİHİ -
INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS ON THE EVENTS OF 1915 -
FAKE PHOTOS AND THE ARMENIAN PROPAGANDA -
ERMENİ PROPAGANDASI VE SAHTE RESİMLER -
Türk-Ermeni İlişkileri Üzerine Ömer Engin Lütem Konferansları 2021 -
A Letter From Japan - Strategically Mum: The Silence of the Armenians -
Japonya'dan Bir Mektup - Stratejik Suskunluk: Ermenilerin Sessizliği -
Türk-Ermeni Uyuşmazlığı Üzerine Ömer Engin Lütem Konferansları 2020 -
Anastas Mikoyan: Confessions of an Armenian Bolshevik -
Sovyet Sonrası Ukrayna’da Devlet, Toplum ve Siyaset - Değişen Dinamikler, Dönüşen Kimlikler -
Türk-Ermeni Uyuşmazlığı Üzerine Ömer Engin Lütem Konferansları 2019 -
Türk-Ermeni Uyuşmazlığı Üzerine Ömer Engin Lütem Konferansları 2018 -
Ermeni Sorunuyla İlgili İngiliz Belgeleri (1912-1923) - British Documents on Armenian Question (1912-1923) -
Turkish-Russian Academics: A Historical Study on the Caucasus -
Gürcistan'daki Müslüman Topluluklar: Azınlık Hakları, Kimlik, Siyaset -
Armenian Diaspora: Diaspora, State and the Imagination of the Republic of Armenia -
Ermeni Sorunu Temel Bilgi ve Belgeler (2. Baskı)
-
CONFERENCE TITLED “HUNGARY’S PERSPECTIVES ON THE TURKIC WORLD"