oswiecim, poland | Bundled tightly against the cold and snow, some elderly Auschwitz survivors on Jan. 27 walked among the barracks and watchtowers of Auschwitz and Birkenau, many clad in scarves bearing the gray and blue stripes of their Nazi prison garments decades ago.
Some 150 Auschwitz survivors and European leaders were on hand for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in Poland, one of scores around the world marking the global day of commemoration established by the United Nations in 2005.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was among those gathered to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
“From this damned land of Auschwitz and Birkenau and the other death camps rise the voices of millions of our brothers and sisters of our people who were suffocated, burned and tortured in a thousand different and unusual deaths,” he told the crowd.
President Barack Obama, in a video message, thanked survivors for finding “the strength to come back again, so many years later, despite the horror you saw here, the suffering you endured here, and the loved ones you lost here.”
Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski recalled the pain of the Polish nation, which was occupied by Nazi Germany throughout the war, but also acknowledged the unique suffering of Jews at that time.
In other commemorations, German-born Pope Benedict XVI spoke at the Vatican of “the horror of crimes of unheard-of brutality that were committed in the death camps created by Nazi Germany.”
In Hungary, government officials promised to pursue efforts to criminalize Holocaust denial and drew parallels between the rise of pro-Nazi groups in the 1930s and the current strengthening of far-right parties. “The struggle against extremists begins with remembrance,” said Csaba Molnar, head of the prime minister’s office. Historians say about a third of those killed in Auschwitz were Hungarians. — ap