Holocaust survivors return for the 70th anniversary of Soviet army’s liberation of the Auschwitz camp
For some who lived through the horrors of the concentration camp, the 70th anniversary of its liberation marks their first and last time back
Some 300 Holocaust survivors gathered with world leaders yesterday under an enormous tent over the gate and railroad tracks that marked the last journey for more than a million people murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz were tinged with a sense of melancholy over the fact that it is expected to be the last major anniversary that a significant number of survivors will be strong enough to attend - and a sense of anxiety at the growing anti-Semitism and radicalism in Europe and the Middle East.
One survivor, Roman Kent, became emotional as he issued a plea to world leaders to remember the atrocities and fight for tolerance. "We do not want our past to be our children's future," he said to applause, fighting back tears and repeating those words a second time.
Politics cast a shadow on the event, with Russian President Vladimir Putin absent - even though the Soviet Red Army liberated the camp - the result of the deep chill between the West and Russia over Ukraine.
Among those in attendance were French President Francois Hollande, whose nation was the recent victim of terrorist attacks that targeted Jews and newspaper satirists.
Participants also included the presidents of Germany and Austria, the perpetrator nations that have spent decades atoning for their sins.
For some survivors, it was their first time back since the end of the second world war.
Rose Schindler, 85, who was among 12 survivors from a family of more than 300 people, returned once 20 years ago but said she wanted a final visit to mourn her parents and four siblings who were killed in the Holocaust.
She was separated from them upon arrival in Auschwitz with no time to say goodbye and survived because she was selected to do slave labour. "I have no graves for my mother and sisters and brother, my father. So this somehow is a way to say goodbye," said Schindler on Monday.
Marcel Tuchman, a 93-year-old survivor of Auschwitz and three other Nazi camps, reflected on the unspeakable suffering of the 1.1 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and others who were tortured and executed at Auschwitz, many in gas chambers.
"The overwhelming statistics are not the stories to be told," Tuchman said. "The stories could only be told by the victims. Unfortunately, their voices were silenced by gas and the crematoria, so we are here, the survivors, to speak for them and honour the memory of their suffering."
Mordechai Ronen, an 82-year-old survivor from Hungary who now lives in Canada, made the trip very reluctantly and said he wasn't sure he had the strength to handle it emotionally. After the survivors prayed in Hebrew, he cried out: "I don't want to come here anymore!"
Putin hits out
President Vladimir Putin yesterday slammed what he called attempts to rewrite history at a Moscow ceremony marking the liberation of Auschwitz.
Speaking at a Jewish museum in Moscow, he said Nazi Germany's crimes including the Holocaust could be neither forgiven nor forgotten.
Putin has repeatedly condemned the West for what he calls attempts to belittle the Soviet army's role in the victory over Germany and to glorify Nazi collaborators in ex-Soviet republics such as Ukraine.
At the ceremony, Putin also drew parallels with the current Ukraine crisis which has sent Moscow's ties with the West to post-cold war lows.
"We all know how dangerous and destructive are double standards, indifference to and disregard for another man's fate as is the case with the current tragedy in eastern Ukraine," Putin said at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre.
