Jan. 27, 2010: Not quite 70 years ago, but 65 years ago, today the Red Army liberated Auschwitz. In 2005 the United Nations declared this date as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The ceremonies held today included survivors and their descendants, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Polish leaders. One survivor remembered that day.
"It was all covered in snow and it was very cold. There was no gong as usual for breakfast that morning but the previous night there had been the usual terror, or even worse - the roll call, the screaming of the SS men. I left the barrack to see what was going on (and) there were dead bodies everywhere because the Germans had shot anyone still able to move or who tried to flee."
By war's end at least 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, but also non-Jewish Poles, Gypsies and others, died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau or from starvation, disease and forced labor. Some 6 million Jews overall were killed in the Holocaust.
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Such a tragedy. May we never forget it and pray that nothing like it happens again.
ReplyDeleteThe same day this year, Pope Benedict XVI said nearly exactly those very same words as his commemoration.
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