Leaders Gather to Mark Liberation of Auschwitz - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Lebenz · #1 01-27-2005, 12:22 PM

Leaders Gather to Mark Liberation of Auschwitz
By CRAIG S. SMITH

Published: January 27, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/international/europe/27cnd-ausc.html?oref=login&hp

KRAKOW, Poland, Jan. 27 - The presidents of Russia, Poland, Israel and Ukraine, as well as Vice President Dick Cheney and other world leaders, joined about 500 invited guests in a theater here today to commemorate the freeing of thousands of people from the nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 60 years ago.

Each of the leaders spoke in turn, at a forum sponsored by the European Jewish Congress and Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, about the need to keep awareness of the Holocaust alive after the last of its aging survivors have died.

Several also warned against the resurgent anti-Semitism in Europe.

"We call upon the European Union not to allow Nazism to life in the imagination of the youth of Europe like some kind of horror show," President Moshe Katsav of Israel said, adding the allies "did not do enough" to prevent the killing of Jews in World War II.

As many as 1.5 million people, including 1 million Jews, met their death at the Auschwitz complex, which included three main camps and 39 smaller camps 40 miles southwest of Krakow. Most were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the second of the main camps, that has come to symbolize the much broader Holocaust in which 6 million Jews died.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke proudly of the Soviet soldiers who gave themselves for the liberation of Auschwitz.

"They switched off the ovens, they saved Krakow," he said. But he also said there was still much to be ashamed of in the current situation.

"We unfortunately still see signs of anti-Semitism in our country," he said.

A group of Russian nationalist legislators recently called for a ban on Jewish groups in the former communist state.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland presented medals to three surviving Red Army soldiers who took part in the liberation of Auschwitz.

Survivors, several wearing the coarse blue and white caps from their prison uniforms, dotted the crowd.

The commemoration, the largest ever, marks the liberation of the camp on Jan. 27, 1945.

The ceremony this year has an air of urgency as Jewish organizations work to ensure that awareness of the Holocaust persists after living memories of it die. This is likely to be the last major anniversary to be attended by both camp survivors and their liberators, all of whom are now in their 90's.

Leaders at the forum sought commitments from European leaders to institutionalize the teaching of the Holocaust, drawing on educational programs and materials developed by Yad Vashem.

"The numbers of world leaders coming and the readiness of the media to follow the commemoration is greater than before" with "a new anti-Semitism building in Europe," said the head of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev, arguing that without a systematic approach to teaching about the Holocaust, its meaning for future generations may fade. "We need a concrete commitment out of this ceremony."

That commitment is all the more critical now because a growing number of Europe's young Muslims are resisting, even rejecting, efforts to teach them about the Holocaust, arguing that there is not enough attention paid to the killing of innocent Muslims by Israel or the United States-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Teachers are reluctant to teach about the Holocaust in some schools, particularly in France, Belgium and Denmark. Mr. Shalev said that most of his organization's educational exchanges with France are now with the country's private Jewish institutions.

A recent string of anti-Semitic attacks across Europe and other unsettling events, such as the widely publicized photograph of Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, wearing a Nazi uniform at a costume party earlier this month and a walkout by far-right German legislators during a minute's silence for Nazi victims on Friday, have raised concerns that the horrors of the Holocaust are being forgotten.

#2 01-27-2005, 01:10 PM

MS-I would gladly be happy to send you to where he lives now.

Vronsky · #3 01-28-2005, 05:42 AM

Actually visited the place a while back. The most disturbing part of the complex is the Birkenau section that lies a couple of miles outside of the town. It's where the mass-killing took place, and where that infamous railtrack ends.
Lost my appetite for a couple of days afterwards, and my faith in mankind's true nature forever.

rs899 · #4 01-28-2005, 07:27 AM

I am going to be nearby in Krakow in a few weeks and I am debating with myself whether to go there or not. I usually like places with great historical interest and don't get too much bad karma after visiting battlefields, but I dunno about visiting that place....

Snibble · #5 01-28-2005, 07:46 AM

I would go, you'll learn more about the place than what has been taught at schools and TV. Enjoy Krakow... but don't forget to dress warmly, this aint Florida.

Vronsky · #6 01-28-2005, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rs899

I am going to be nearby in Krakow in a few weeks and I am debating with myself whether to go there or not. I usually like places with great historical interest and don't get too much bad karma after visiting battlefields, but I dunno about visiting that place....

It's not Hollywood's Schindler's List, there's no happy ending when you leave.
The reality and magnitude of the horror and barbarism is beyond comprehension. I took home a small piece of barbed wire from the Birkenau fence: this 'souvenir' still gives me the creeps as it recalls seeing those barracks and gaschambers.

rs899 · #7 01-28-2005, 03:25 PM

Hey Snibble-

on a lighter note (and hijacking the thread)- know any junkyards or what pass for them in Poland? I need some euro lights.

Rick

boneheaddoctor · #8 01-28-2005, 03:58 PM

You know one day I hope to be able to go to one..........I know its no disneyland..........but its one of those things that I think everyone should do.

Botnst · #9 01-28-2005, 09:23 PM

I was just watching CNN and they interviewed an old fellow who was a WWII veteran. The old guy had been with the 101st and fought across Europe from Normandy to Germany and seen death and destruction on all sides. He had gotten accustomed to it on some level so that he could deal with the combat. He said that when his unit liberated a concentration camp that he wept for those prisoners, living and dead.

Back in the 1960's, shortly after Eichmann was executed, I think (I was living in 'lanta then), there was a TV show seen through the eyes of a concentration camp survivor. It juxtaposed historic film with a moddern visit by the survivor, I think in Poland but I'm not certain. I only saw it once and I couldn't have been more than 13 or 14 but the show has haunted me to this day. It was titled, "I Remember", I think. Coincidentally there was an old woman down the street from us who would walk the street early in the morning singing yiddish songs. Her voice was not pretty and we kids thought she was crazy-scarey. She was a large woman and walked funny, a large limp. My Dad told us kids that she had been in a camp liberated late in the war. The walking wounded I remember.

suginami · #10 01-28-2005, 09:30 PM

I've watched some of the footage on TV, and it's always hard to watch.

When I was in DC last October, I visited the National Holocaust Museum. The hardest for me was seeing pictures of the children. Another thing was the piles and piles of the possessions of those who ended up at the concentration camps: their suitcases, clothes, family heirlooms, etc.; and piles and piles of their shoes.

You know what's funny to me is that the Nazi party reclassified Jesus as an Aryan. I guess they couldn't stomach being Christians with the Son of God as a Jew.

Vronsky · #11 01-29-2005, 02:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rs899

I am going to be nearby in Krakow in a few weeks and I am debating with myself whether to go there or not. I usually like places with great historical interest and don't get too much bad karma after visiting battlefields, but I dunno about visiting that place....

If you're into historical sites, near the place of Ketrzyn -or Rastenburg back then- in the Eastern part of Poland, there's the Wolfschanze, or better: what's left of it. Hitler's headquarters where Von Staufenberg's failed assassination took place. A huge complex of demolished bunkers in the middle of nowhere.

Vronsky · #12 01-29-2005, 03:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Botnst

I was just watching CNN and they interviewed an old fellow who was a WWII veteran. The old guy had been with the 101st and fought across Europe from Normandy to Germany and seen death and destruction on all sides. He had gotten accustomed to it on some level so that he could deal with the combat. He said that when his unit liberated a concentration camp that he wept for those prisoners, living and dead.

Back in the 1960's, shortly after Eichmann was executed, I think (I was living in 'lanta then), there was a TV show seen through the eyes of a concentration camp survivor. It juxtaposed historic film with a moddern visit by the survivor, I think in Poland but I'm not certain. I only saw it once and I couldn't have been more than 13 or 14 but the show has haunted me to this day. It was titled, "I Remember", I think. Coincidentally there was an old woman down the street from us who would walk the street early in the morning singing yiddish songs. Her voice was not pretty and we kids thought she was crazy-scarey. She was a large woman and walked funny, a large limp. My Dad told us kids that she had been in a camp liberated late in the war. The walking wounded I remember.

Have you ever seen the French (sorry, couldn't resist to mention that

) documentary 'Shoah' by Claude Lanzman? I believe it was made in the 80's. It's an 8-hour or so production that consists mainly of plain interviews with all sorts of victims and perpetrators, also on location. The programme was on TV here again recently. Because the film style is so plain, it's very compelling stuff. There's a scene in a barbershop in Israel where this barber tells (while he's working) about his time in Birkenau where he was assigned to cut the hair of the victms before they were gassed. Horrifying stories, particularly about the moment when he has to cut the hair of his relatives (I believe even his sister).