World
leaders and elderly survivors of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz
gather in Poland on Thursday to mark the 60th anniversary of its
liberation and to condemn resurgent anti-Semitism.
Some 1.5 million people perished in the gas chambers and crematoria
of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a vast camp which Nazi Germany set up in
occupied Poland during World War Two as the main centre of their
"final solution", the genocide of European Jews.
It was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945.
"I hope and I believe the entire world, especially the free world,
will indeed learn the lesson from these events, the events of World
War Two," Israeli President Moshe Katsav said on the eve of the
ceremonies.
Katsav will be joined at the camp by German President Horst
Koehler, Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Vice President Dick
Cheney and French President Jacques Chirac. Along with dozens of
other European leaders, survivors and former Soviet soldiers they
will light candles at the camp's main extermination complex,
Birkenau.
Preparations were hit by snowstorms and gale-strong winds which
threatened to block roads leading to the camp, some 70 km from
Krakow.
Some leaders, including Putin, Koehler and Chirac, had to delay
their arrivals because of the weather and forecasters predicted
more snowstorms for Thursday.
Anti-semitism rising
The anniversary has already prompted vows of "never again" from
leaders around the world but they have come against a background of
rising anti-Semitism and cases of extreme nationalism across
Europe.
In Germany, far-right deputies walked out of a session for Nazi
victims at the Saxony state assembly on Friday, while sharp rises
in anti-Semitic incidents were reported in Russia and
Britain.
For the dwindling number of the camp's survivors, this is evidence
the world has forgotten the horrors and lessons of World War
Two.
"It's much easier not to think about it, not to acknowledge what
people did to other people not so long ago," said Abraham
Mor-Morgentaler, a Polish Jew who spent two years in Auschwitz.
"But if we forget, the genocide may return."
Mor-Morgentaler is one of the few who, by chance or cunning,
cheated death at Auschwitz. Most Jews arriving there by cattle
trains were sent straight to gas chambers and their bodies burned
in one of the camp's five crematoriums.
Apart from Jews, many Poles, Russians, Gypsies and homosexuals were
exterminated at the camp.
Nobel laureate author and World War Two death camp survivor Elie
Wiesel told a special U.N. General Assembly session on the
Holocaust the world could have avoided other mass killings if it
had remembered the horrors of Nazi genocide.
"If the world had listened, we may have prevented Darfur, Cambodia,
Bosnia and naturally Rwanda," Wiesel
said.
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