WARSAW, Poland (AP) – A Jewish prayer for the souls of people killed in the Holocaust resounded on Wednesday over where the Warsaw ghetto stood during World War II while a world disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, observed the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Most International Holocaust Remembrance Day was held online this year due to the virus, including the annual ceremony at the site of the former Auschwitz death camp, where German Nazi forces killed 1.1 million people in occupied Poland. The memorial site was closed to visitors due to the pandemic.
On one of the few live occasions, mourners gathered in the capital of Poland to pay tribute to a memorial in the former Warsaw ghetto, the largest of all the ghettos where European Jews were detained in cruel and deadly conditions before going to mass. extermination was sent to die. matches.
From the Vatican, Pope Francis spoke of the need to remember the genocide carried out in World War II and said that it was a sign of humanity and a condition for a peaceful future.
Francis also warned that distorted ideologies could lead to a repeat of mass murder on a horrific scale. Recalling the Holocaust, he said, “it also means being aware that these things can happen again, starting with ideological proposals that claim to save a nation and ultimately destroy a nation and humanity.”
Among those commemorated from home on Wednesday is Polish-born Auschwitz survivor Tova Friedman, who arrived at the camp when she was 5 years old and 6 when she found herself on 27 January 2020 among thousands of survivors who was liberated by Soviet troops.
Friedman, now 82, attended last year’s event in Auschwitz, hoping to take her eight grandchildren there this year to help them better understand her experiences. But the pandemic prevented it.
From her home in Highland Park, New Jersey, she records a warning message about the increase in hatred that will be part of a virtual compliance organized by the World Jewish Congress.
Across Europe, the victims were remembered and honored in various ways.
In Austria and Slovakia, hundreds of survivors were offered their first doses of a coronavirus vaccine in a gesture that is symbolic and life-saving, given the threat of the virus to older adults. In Israel, about 900 Holocaust survivors died from COVID-19 out of the 5,300 infected last year.
Israel, which has 197,000 Holocaust survivors, is officially celebrating its spring anniversary. But events are also held by remembrance and groups of survivors across the country, mostly virtually or without members of the public.
Meanwhile, Luxembourg on Wednesday signed an agreement in which it agreed to pay compensation and restore dormant bank accounts, insurance policies and the looted art to Holocaust survivors.
Politicians as well as ordinary people took part in a World Jewish Congress campaign in which people posted photos of themselves and #WeRemember. It will be shown later on Wednesday on a screen at Auschwitz next to the gate and a cattle car as the victims were transported there.
The online nature of this anniversary is a stark contrast to the events marking the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. last year, when about 200 survivors and dozens of European leaders and royals gathered on the site of the former camp. It was one of the last major international events before the pandemic forced the cancellation of most major events.
More than 1.1 million people were killed in Auschwitz by the German Nazis and their henchmen, the most notorious in a network of murder sites set up in occupied Europe. The vast majority of those killed in Auschwitz were Jews, but others, including Poles, Roma, homosexuals, and Soviet prisoners of war, were also killed.
In total, about 6 million European Jews and millions of other people were killed by the Germans and their collaborators. In 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
While anniversaries have moved online for the first time, the survivors’ quest is to tell their stories as warning words.
Rose Schindler, a 91-year-old survivor from Auschwitz, originally from Czechoslovakia but now living in San Diego, California, has been talking to her school groups about her experience for 50 years. Her story, and that of her late husband, Max, also a survivor, is also told in a book, “Two who survived: keeping hope alive while surviving the Holocaust.”
After being transported to Auschwitz in 1944, Schindler was selected more than once for immediate death in the gas chambers. She survived by escaping each time and joining the work details.
The horrors she experienced – the mass murder of her parents and four of her seven siblings, the hunger, being shaved, lice infestations – are hard to bear, but she continues to talk to groups, just by Zoom.
“We need to tell our stories so it doesn’t happen again,” Schindler said in a Zoom call from her home this week. “It’s amazing what we went through, and the whole world was silent while it was going on.”
Friedman says she believes it is her role to ‘sound the alarm’ about growing anti-Semitism and other hatreds in the world, otherwise another tragedy could happen. ‘
The hatred, she said, was evident when a crowd inspired by former President Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol on January 6. Some insurgents wore clothes with anti-Semitic messages such as ‘Camp Auschwitz’.
“It was completely shocking and I could not believe it. And I do not know what part of America feels that way. “I hope it is a very small and isolated group and not a penetrating feeling,” Friedman said on Monday.
In her recorded message that aired Wednesday, Friedman said she compared the virus of hate in the world to COVID-19. She said that the world today is a virus of anti-Semitism, of racism, and if you do not stop the virus, it will kill humanity. ‘
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Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.