WARSAW, Poland (AP) – A Jewish prayer for the souls of people murdered in the Holocaust echoed on Wednesday over where the Warsaw ghetto was during World War II as a world interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic in celebration of the 76th anniversary of the liberation from Auschwitz.
Most celebrations of International Holocaust Memorial Day were 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 is closed to visitors because of the pandemic.
At one of the few live events, mourners gathered in the capital of Poland to pay their respects at a memorial in the former Warsaw ghetto, the largest of all ghettos where European Jews were held in cruel and deadly conditions before being sent to die in mass extermination camps.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in a message to a Jewish World Congress and an event at the Auschwitz memorial museum, said that the online nature of memory events does not in any way diminish their importance.
“It is a duty, but also a responsibility, that we inherit from those who lived through the horrors of Shoah, whose voices are gradually disappearing,” said Steinmeier. “The greatest danger for all of us begins with oblivion. Without remembering more than we inflict on each other when we tolerate anti-Semitism and racism in our midst. “
“We must remain alert, we must identify prejudice and conspiracy theories and fight them with reason, passion and determination,” said Steinmeier.
From the Vatican, Pope Francis said that remembering is a sign of humanity and a condition for a peaceful future, while warning that distorted ideologies can lead to a repeat of mass murder on a horrible scale.
In Germany, the parliament held a special session to honor the victims. In Austria and Slovakia, hundreds of survivors received their first doses of a coronavirus vaccine in a symbolic and saving gesture, given the threat of the virus to older adults. In Israel, about 900 Holocaust survivors died from COVID-19 out of 5,300 who were infected last year.
Israel, which has 197,000 Holocaust survivors, officially marks its Holocaust remembrance day in the spring. But events were also taking place across the country, most of them virtually or without the public.
Meanwhile, Luxembourg has signed an agreement agreeing to pay damages and return inactive bank accounts, insurance policies and looted art to Holocaust survivors.
Survivors and many others joined a campaign of the World Jewish Congress, which involved posting photos of themselves and # NósRemember They were broadcast in Auschwitz on a screen by the gate and a cattle car depicting the way prisoners of the field were transported there.
The online nature of this year’s celebrations is in stark contrast to the events that marked last year’s anniversary, when some 200 survivors and dozens of European and royalty leaders gathered at the site of the old camp. It was one of the last major international meetings before the pandemic interrupted normal life.
Due to the pandemic, most survivors today live “in isolation and loneliness,” said Tova Friedman, 82, a Polish-born Auschwitz survivor who attended last year’s event and hoped to return this year with her eight grandchildren. Instead, she recorded a warning message from her home in Highland Park, New Jersey.
“Today, while anti-Semitism is rising again, the voices of protest are not many and not loud enough,” said Tova, who at 6 was among the thousands of prisoners to greet the Soviet troops who liberated the camp on January 27, 1945.
Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, also warned of the worsening of anti-Semitism, populism and demagogy.
“Our world is suffering (from) our own inability to react, our own passivity,” said Cywinski. “We are the spectators of our times.”
The vast majority of those killed at Auschwitz were Jews, but Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and Soviet prisoners of war were also murdered there.
In all, about 6 million European Jews and millions of others were killed by the Germans and their collaborators. In 2005, the United Nations designated the anniversary of Auschwitz’s release as International Holocaust Memorial Day.
Of the 6 million Jewish victims, about 1.5 million were children, and this year’s celebrations included a special focus on them. All survivors were children or young people during the war that began more than 81 years ago.
Although the celebrations moved online for the first time, one constant is the motivation of survivors to tell their stories as words of caution.
Rose Schindler, a 91-year-old Auschwitz survivor who was originally from Czechoslovakia but now lives in San Diego, California, has been speaking to 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 Schindler was transported to Auschwitz in 1944, she was selected more than once for immediate death in the gas chambers. She survived by escaping every time and joining work groups.
The horrors she has experienced – the mass murder of her parents and four of the seven siblings, hunger, being shaved, lice infestations – are difficult to transmit, but she has continued to speak in groups in recent months for Zoom.
“We have to tell our stories so it doesn’t happen again,” Schindler said in a call from Zoom from his home on Monday. “What we went through is unbelievable, and the whole world was silent as it happened.”
Friedman said he believes it is his role to “sound the alarm” about growing anti-Semitism and other hatreds in the world; otherwise, “another tragedy can happen”.
That hatred, she said, was clear when a mob attacked the United States Capitol on January 6. Some rebels wore clothes with anti-Semitic messages like “Camp Auschwitz”.
“It was totally shocking and I couldn’t believe it. And I don’t know what part of America feels that way. I hope it is a very small and isolated group and not a general feeling, ”said Friedman.
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Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.