Nazi death camp survivors mark 79th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation on Holocaust Remembrance Day
CTV
A group of survivors of Nazi death camps will mark the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during the Second World War in a modest ceremony Saturday in southern Poland.
A group of survivors of Nazi death camps will mark the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during the Second World War in a modest ceremony Saturday in southern Poland.
About 20 survivors from various camps set up by Nazi Germany around Europe were to lay wreaths at the Death Wall in Auschwitz and hold prayers at the monument in Birkenau. They will memorialize around 1.1 million camp victims, mostly Jews. The attentively preserved memorial site and museum are located near the city of Oswiecim.
Nearly six million European Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust -- the mass murder of Jews and other groups before and during the Second World War.
Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the survivors will be accompanied by Polish Senate Speaker Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, Culture Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz and Israeli Ambassador Yacov Livne.
The theme of the observances is the human being, symbolized in simple, hand-drawn portraits. They are meant to stress that the horror of Auschwitz-Birkenau lies in the suffering of people held and killed there.
Holocaust victims were commemorated across Europe.
In Germany, where people put down flowers and lit candles at memorials for the victims of the Nazi terror, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that his country would continue to carry the responsibility for this "crime against humanity."
