WARSAW, Poland – 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 disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic watched 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.
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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,” he added.
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 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 of Covid-19 out of 5,300 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.
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.