UPDATE: Poland remembers Auschwitz liberation
PR dla Zagranicy
Alicja Baczyńska
27.01.2019 17:00
Commemorations marking the 74th anniversary of liberating the Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were held in Oświęcim, southern Poland, on Sunday.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L) during commemorations held at the Victims’ Memorial at the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz II-Birkenau on Sunday. Photo: PAP/Andrzej Grygiel
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at a ceremony held at the site of the former camp: “It wasn’t the Nazis who perpetrated the Holocaust, it was Hitler’s Germany,” Poland’s PAP news agency reported.
Morawiecki was cited as saying: “Hitler’s Germany fed on fascist ideology...," adding that "all the evil" came from Germany.
He added: “We shouldn’t forget that because otherwise a relativism of evil follows.”
“The Polish state is a guardian of the truth, which cannot in any way be relativised.”
Several dozen former prisoners and state representatives, took part in observances taking place at the site of the former camp.
The key commemorations saw survivors share their testimonies of horrors they experienced and witnessed at the camp.
One of them, Janina Iwańska, said: "I wish for young people, younger generations not to follow the path I was subjected to." She was taken to Auschwitz at age 14.
The German Auschwitz Birkenau camp operated from 1940 until its liberation by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. The anniversary is commemorated across the globe as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, as well as non-Jewish Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet POWs and people of many other nationalities, perished at Auschwitz during World War II.
(aba)
Source: PAP
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