Latest news with #InternationalHolocaustMemorialDay
Voice of America
27-01-2025
- General
- Voice of America
Survivors, world leaders mark 80th anniversary of Auschwitz death camp liberation
The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Around 50 survivors joined world leaders Monday at the site of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in Poland, on the 80th anniversary of its liberation in World War II – marked around the world as International Holocaust Memorial Day. Henry Ridgwell reports.
Voice of America
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Voice of America
Auschwitz liberation at 80: Survivors, world leaders mark milestone
Around 50 survivors and dozens of world leaders attended memorial events at the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation by the Soviet Red Army in World War II. January 27 is marked around the world as International Holocaust Memorial Day. Six million people were killed in the Holocaust as the Nazis attempted to eliminate the Jewish race. In front of the so-called 'Death Gate,' through which more than a million Jews and other prisoners were led to their deaths, the survivors gathered in a heated tent, joined by heads of state and delegates from across the world. They lit candles and laid wreaths of remembrance for the estimated 1.1 million people who perished at the camp. Tova Friedman, who was 2 years old when she was taken to the camp at Auschwitz, is the youngest of the survivors. 'We were victims in a moral vacuum,' she told delegates. 'But today, however, we have an obligation not only to remember, which is very, very important, but also to warn and to teach that hatred only begets more hatred.' Auschwitz liberation On Jan. 27, 1945, Red Army troops liberated Auschwitz, the largest of the six Nazi extermination camps. What they found continues to haunt humanity. Industrial-scale human slaughter spread across a vast factory complex of dormitories, gas chambers, crematoria and mass graves — the apparatus of a regime determined to wipe out the entire Jewish race. A genocide conducted over 4-and-a-half years, planned and executed with meticulous detail. It was part of the Nazis' 'final solution to the Jewish problem' — a strategy of mass murder agreed at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. An estimated 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, around 960,000 of them Jews. Poles, Roma, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war and other nationalities were also murdered in the thousands. Victims were stripped of their clothing and forced into packed chambers filled with cyanide-based Zyklon-B gas. By summer 1944, an estimated 12,000 people a day were being gassed to death. Thousands of others were shot or beaten to death or died from disease, starvation and exposure. Bodies were burned or buried in mass graves. 'Burning bodies' Janina Iwanska was taken to Auschwitz by train from another Polish transit camp in August 1944 at age 14. 'As soon as I got off the wagon, I was immediately hit by the smell, the one I knew from Treblinka [concentration camp] — the smell of burning bodies,' she told Reuters. 'There were small children there who were brought with their mothers. After leaving the 'disinfection' room, they were separated, torn off them. The mothers almost ripped the hands of these children off because they did not want to let them go. Besides, some of the children could not recognize their mothers, because not only were the clothes different but also the heads. A shaved head and a head with hair are two completely different heads,' Iwanska said. As Red Army troops approached the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp from the east, Nazi soldiers attempted to cover up their crimes. Around 60,000 prisoners were forcibly transferred in so-called "death marches" to other camps farther west. It's estimated that up to 15,000 died along the way. By the time the Russian troops entered Auschwitz, around 7,000 prisoners remained, most on the brink of death. Thousands died before receiving medical help. 'Culture of remembrance' Germany now embraces 'Erinnerungskultur,' an official "culture of remembrance," or a duty to take responsibility for the Holocaust. 'We keep alive the memory of the breach of civilization committed by Germans in the Holocaust and convey it to every generation in our country again and again. Our responsibility never ends,' German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said ahead of the anniversary. But the 80th anniversary comes amid growing fears over the rise of the far-right in Germany, Europe and beyond. Such concerns were voiced by many Auschwitz survivors, including Leon Weintraub, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and now lives in Sweden. "Be attentive and be vigilant,' Weintraub told delegates. 'We, the survivors, we understand that the consequences of being considered different is active persecution, the effects of which we have personally experienced on our own skin. So, let us be very serious, and let us take seriously what the enemies of democracy preach. They generally seek to implement these slogans they promote,' he said. German fears The German government has repeatedly warned of the dangers of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party, which is polling in second place, or around 20%, ahead of February elections. The AfD is being monitored by German intelligence services as a potentially 'extremist' party. In a recent televised conversation with Elon Musk, the U.S. billionaire and ally of President Donald Trump, AfD's leader Alice Weidel said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was not right-wing but a 'communist.' Speaking at an AfD conference Saturday by video link, Musk, who is an open supporter of the party, questioned Germany's approach to its past. 'I think there's frankly too much of a focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that. Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents or even let alone their parents, the great-grandparents, maybe even,' Musk said. Israel conflict The Hamas cross-border attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and the brutal Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, have overshadowed memorial events in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not attend the Auschwitz commemorations. Netanyahu faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for suspected war crimes committed during Israel's war on Hamas, which he strongly denies. The United States, a close ally of Israel, has condemned the warrant and threatened sanctions against the court in The Hague. Poland assured Netanyahu that he would not be arrested if he attended the Auschwitz memorial events. However, the Israeli prime minister instead spent Monday in a Tel Aviv court as his long-running corruption trial resumed. Israel was instead represented by Education Minister Yoav Kisch. Relatives of the dozens of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza traveled to Poland for the Auschwitz liberation anniversary, while survivors of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre joined survivors of the Holocaust for commemorative events in Israel.
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Israel opens Eichmann trial archives online
Israel's national archives announced Monday they were granting public access online to hundreds of thousands of documents from the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of the main organisers of the Holocaust. Timed to coincide with International Holocaust Memorial Day, which marks 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, the national archives uploaded 380,000 pages of "chilling testimony, correspondence, lists and photographs" to their website, the Israeli prime minister's office said in a statement. Eichmann, who fled to Argentina and lived there under a fake identity after World War II, was captured by Israeli spies in 1960 after a years-long manhunt and clandestinely taken to Israel to stand trial. He was found guilty of masterminding the implementation of the "final solution", the Nazis' plan to exterminate Jews, and was executed by hanging in 1962, aged 56. The statement called the Eichmann trial papers one of the archives' "most interesting collections", including "court files and correspondence between the State Attorney's Office and (then-prime minister) David Ben-Gurion". The text of the scanned documents can be searched thanks to optical character recognition (OCR) technology, allowing users to perform advanced searches using keywords, names, events and dates, said the statement from the prime minister's office, which houses the archives. That will allow Holocaust survivors' families to find "the personal stories of their loved ones, at times in their own handwriting", it said. dms/dla/ila/jhb/smw
Arab News
26-01-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Israel releases Holocaust survivor figures ahead of memorial day
JERUSALEM: Israel published information on Holocaust survivors in the country on Sunday, the eve of the International Holocaust Memorial Day which will mark 80 years since the liberation of Nazi death camp Auschwitz. An Israeli government agency dedicated to supporting survivors of the mass murder of Jews during World War II issued its yearly report, estimating that more than 123,000 Holocaust survivors currently live in Israel. They include 41,751 people who survived Nazi persecution and 44,334 who fled the advance of Nazi forces particularly in the former Soviet Union. A third group of 37,630 survivors were victims of anti-Semitism during the war but were outside of Europe — mainly Jews living under the French Vichy regime in Morocco and Algeria, as well as Iraqi Jews. The report also mentions 133 Israelis who fought during World War II in the ranks of the Allied forces. Sixteen thousand spouses of Holocaust survivors who had passed away are also listed, as they receive government support. Government support for Holocaust survivors totalled 3.9 billion shekels (about $1.1 billion) in 2024, according to the report. Most of the survivors included in the report, 61 percent, are women. About 37 percent were born in the former Soviet Union, 17 percent in Morocco and 11 percent in Iraq. One-third of Holocaust survivors listed by Israel arrived in the country between its establishment in 1948 and 1951, according to the report. Nine percent have immigrated over the past 25 years, and 54 individuals in 2024.
