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 on the 76th anniversary of the liberation of 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.
From the Vatican, Pope Francis he spoke of the need to remember the genocide perpetrated in the Second World War, saying that it is a sign of humanity and a condition for a peaceful future.
Francisco also warned that distorted ideologies can lead to a repeat of mass murder on a horrible scale. Remembering the Holocaust, he said, “also means being aware that these things can happen again, from ideological proposals that aim to save a people and end up destroying a people and humanity”.
Among those who will celebrate from home on Wednesday will be Polish survivor of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, who arrived at the camp when she was 5 and 6 when she found herself among thousands of survivors released by Soviet troops on January 27, 2020.
Friedman, now 82, attended last year’s event in Auschwitz and hoped to take his eight grandchildren there this year to help them better understand their experiences. But the pandemic prevented that.
From her home in Highland Park, New Jersey, she recorded a warning message about the rise in hatred that will be part of a virtual practice organized by the World Jewish Congress.
Across Europe, victims were remembered and honored in many ways.
In Austria and Slovakia, hundreds of survivors received the first doses of a vaccine against the coronavirus in a symbolic and truly saving gesture, given the threat of the virus to older adults. In Israel, about 900 Holocaust survivors died of COVID-19 of the 5,300 that were infected last year.
Israel, which has 197,000 Holocaust survivors, officially marks its Holocaust remembrance day in the spring. But the events were also being held by memory groups and survivors across the country, most of them virtually or without the public.
Meanwhile, Luxembourg signed an agreement on Wednesday agreeing to pay damages and return inactive bank accounts, insurance policies and looted art to Holocaust survivors.
Politicians and ordinary people were joining the World Jewish Congress campaign, which involved people posting photos of themselves and #WeRemember. They will be shown on Wednesday on a screen in Auschwitz next to the gate and a cattle car, the way the victims were transported there.
The online nature of this year’s celebrations is in stark contrast to the events that mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz last year, when some 200 survivors and dozens of European and royalty leaders gathered at the site of the former camp. It was one of the last major international meetings before the pandemic forced the cancellation of most major meetings.
More than 1.1 million people were murdered by German Nazis and their henchmen in Auschwitz, the most famous in a network of slaughterhouses set up across occupied Europe. The vast majority of those killed at Auschwitz were Jews, but others, including Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and Soviet prisoners of war, were also murdered.
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 January 27 as the International Holocaust Memorial Day.
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. The story of her and her late husband, Max, also a survivor, is also told in a book, “Two who survived: keeping hope alive by 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 her seven siblings, hunger, being shaved, lice infestations – are difficult to transmit, but she has continued to speak in groups in the past few months just for Zoom.
“We have to tell our stories so it doesn’t happen again,” said Schindler in a call from Zoom from his home this week. “What we went through is unbelievable, and the whole world was silent as it happened.”
Friedman says he believes it is his role to “sound the alarm” about the rise of anti-Semitism and other hatreds in the world, otherwise “another tragedy could happen”.
That hatred, she said, was clear when a crowd inspired by former President Donald Trump 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 on Monday.
In his recorded message that will be broadcast on Wednesday, Friedman said he likens the hatred virus in the world to COVID-19. She said that the world today is witnessing “a virus of anti-Semitism, of racism, and if you don’t stop the virus, it will kill humanity”.
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Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.