By CRAIG S. SMITH January 27, 2005

Transkrypt

1 World Leaders Gather for Auschwitz Ceremony By CRAIG S. SMITH January 27, KRAKOW, Poland, Jan Heads of state, prominent Jews, Nazi death camp survivors and a handful of their liberators began gathering here Wednesday in a heavy snowstorm to commemorate the freeing of thousands of people from the nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 60 years ago. As many as 1.5 million people, including 1 million Jews, met their death at the Auschwitz complex, which included three main camps and 39 smaller camps 40 miles southwest of Krakow. Most were killed at Auschwitz- Birkenau, the second of the main camps, that has come to symbolize the much broader Holocaust in which 6 million Jews died. The commemoration Thursday, the largest ever, marks the liberation of the camp on Jan. 27, It will take place at a memorial built between the ruins of two of the camp's gas chambers. The ceremony this year has an air of urgency as Jewish organizations work to ensure that awareness of the Holocaust persists after living memories of it die. This is likely to be the last major anniversary to be attended by both camp survivors and their former Soviet Red Army liberators. Only seven liberators are expected to attend the ceremony Thursday. All of them are in their 90's. A forum on Thursday, sponsored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Israel and the European Jewish Congress, will seek commitments from European leaders to institutionalize the teaching of the Holocaust, drawing on educational programs and materials developed by Yad Vashem. "The numbers of world leaders coming and the readiness of the media to follow the commemoration is greater than before, but the event is also more important now with a new anti- Semitism building in Europe," said the head of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev, arguing that without

2 a systematic approach to teaching about the Holocaust, its meaning for future generations may fade. "We need a concrete commitment out of this ceremony." That commitment is all the more critical now because a growing number of Europe's young Muslims are resisting, even rejecting, efforts to teach them about the Holocaust, arguing that there is not enough attention paid to the killing of innocent Muslims by Israel or the United States-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Teachers are reluctant to teach about the Holocaust in some schools, particularly in France, Belgium and Denmark. Mr. Shalev said that most of his organization's educational exchanges with France are now with the country's private Jewish institutions. The commemoration will be attended by heads of state from Russia, Poland, Germany, France and Israel along with political leaders from nearly 40 other countries. Vice President Dick Cheney will attend on behalf of the United States. He arrived Wednesday and met with the Polish President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, a staunch supporter of the war in Iraq who is facing increasing public pressure to bring Polish troops home. "We have to remind our youth that these great evils of history were perpetrated not in some remote uncivilized world but in the very heart of the civilized world," Mr. Cheney told a gathering of survivors and their families at the Galicja Jewish Museum in Krakow Wednesday. Exhibits there trace several centuries of Jewish history in southern Poland. The commemoration means different things to each nation: for Russia it is a commemoration of its often-overlooked role as liberator, while for Poland and other Central European countries it is both part of a gradual recognition of their complicity in the killing and an opportunity to draw closer to Europe. Poland and several other former Soviet bloc countries joined the European Union last year and the rest are waiting to join. A recent string of anti-semitic attacks across Europe and other unsettling events, such as the widely publicized photograph of Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, wearing a Nazi uniform at a costume party earlier this month and a walkout by far-right German legislators during a minute's silence for Nazi victims on Friday, have raised concerns that the horrors of the Holocaust are being forgotten. Moshe Kantor, chairman of the European Jewish Congress, warned that the rise in anti-semitic incidents should not be ignored. "From broken windows to death camps was the blink of an eye," Mr. Kantor said, referring to the four years between the 1938 attacks on German Jews known as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, and the 1942 Wannsee Conference at which German leaders discussed the "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe." At a dinner Wednesday, Mr. Kantor talked of the need to pass on personal recollections of the Holocaust, not just statistics or historical accounts. As an example, he told of meeting an elderly woman during a visit to the Birkenau camp several years ago. She remarked to him that the camp

3 looked different when she was interned there because there was no grass then; starving prisoners had eaten it all.

4 Europe must educate its young to avoid repeat of Holocaust: Jewish leader By Tarmu Tammerk Wednesday, January 26, 2005 KRAKOW, Poland Jan 26 Europe must act urgently to ensure that creeping anti-semitism does not boil over into another tragedy, European Jewish Congress chairman Moshe Kantor said Wednesday, a day ahead of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. "The highly commemorative date of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz has prompted us to make a start for a major pan-european education programme to teach about the Holocaust," Kantor told AFP in an exclusive interview. The rising tide of anti-semitism in today's Europe reminded Kantor of the situation on the eve of World War II, and makes it urgent to launch a concerted effort to educate the continent's youth about the Holocaust to ensure it does not happen again, he said. "The situation in Europe is very similar to what happened just before World War II," Kantor said. "The speed with which the Kristallnacht of 1938 turned into the infamous Wannsee conference of 1942 was just a historical second," he said. The Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, was a nationwide pogrom launched in November 1938 in Germany, targeting Jews. In January 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi party and German government leaders gathered at a villa on Berlin's Lake Wannsee to discuss the "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe." "From broken windows we reached the death camps in the blink of an eye. Today, we are standing on pieces of crystal in Europe again. We see the same things happening in France, in Britain, in Russia, elsewhere." The European Jewish Congress is on Thursday organising an international forum in Krakow on the Holocaust, called "Let my People Live", which Kantor hopes will be the starting point for efforts all over Europe to educate people about the Holocaust. "Xenophobia, anti-semitism and racism are psychological diseases, which can be cured only by a systematic dialogue of the doctor with the patient," Kantor said.

5 "The Let my People Live Forum launches this systematic dialogue, and may become the physician." Although many centres in Europe teach about the Nazi attempt to wipe out Europe's 11 million Jews in World War II, not all countries are involved and the training is often drab and monotonous. "We want to take care of all nationalities and introduce country-specific programmes so that young people can truly get connected," Kantor said. "The training must be provocative and challenging, not just dry numbers," he added. Thursday's forum will gather together some of the last, still-living survivors of Auschwitz and Soviet Red Army soldiers who liberated the camp on January 27, 1945, many of them in their 80s, as well as young people from around the world. It could mark "the last chance we have to gather this cross-section of people together in the same room," Kantor said. He also stressed that, to his mind, victims of the Holocaust, of whom at least one million died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, should be regarded separately from the rest of the 50 million Europeans who died in World War II. "We maintain that Holocaust victims and war victims should not be mixed," he said. "In the Holocaust, people were killed for being Jews, which makes them separate from war victims."

6 Eduquer ses enfants pour éviter un nouvel holocauste: Moshe Kantor L'Europe doit agir vite pour éviter que l'antisémitisme rampant actuel ne finisse en nouvel holocauste, a estimé mercredi le président du Congrès juif européen Moshe Kantor, présent à Cracovie pour les cérémonies du 60ème anniversaire de la libération d'auschwitz. "La date très commémorative du 60ème anniversaire de la libération d'auschwitz nous a amenés à lancer un programme inter-européen d'éducation sur l'holocauste", a-t-il déclaré dans un entretien avec l'afp. La montée de l'antisémitisme aujourd'hui en Europe évoque pour M. Kantor la situation prévalant avant le déclenchement de la Seconde guerre mondiale. Ce qui rend urgente une initiation des jeunes à ce qu'a été l'horreur de la Shoah pour que cela ne se reproduise plus jamais, dit-il. "La situation en Europe est très similaire à ce qui s'est produit juste avant la Seconde guerre mondiale", dit M. Kantor. "La rapidité avec laquelle la Nuit de cristal en 1938 a mené à l'infamante conférence de Wannsee en 1942 n'a duré qu'une seconde dans l'histoire", dit-il. La Nuit de cristal en novembre 1938 été le lancement à l'échelle nationale en Allemagne d'un pogrom contre les juifs. En janvier 1942, les hauts responsables nazis se sont retrouvés dans une villa près de Berlin pour mettre au point "la solution finale à la question juive en Europe". "Des fenêtres brisées, nous nous sommes retrouvés dans les camps de la mort en un clin d'oeil. Aujourd'hui, nous sommes de nouveau en Europe sur du cristal brisé. Nous voyons les mêmes choses se produire en France, en Grande-Bretagne, en Russie et ailleurs", ajoute le dirigeant de la communauté juive européenne. Le Congrès juif européen organise jeudi un forum international à Cracovie sur l'holocauste, "Let my people live" (Laissez vivre mon peuple) que M. Kantor souhaite devenir le départ d'efforts d'éducation sur l'holocauste à travers toute l'europe. "La xénophobie, l'antisémitisme et le racisme sont des maladies psychologiques qui ne peuvent être soignées que par un dialogue systématique entre un médecin et son patient", ajoute-t-il.

7 "Que le forum Let my People Live lance un dialogue systématique et devienne le médecin". Bien que nombre de centres en Europe enseignent cette période noire de l'histoire, nombre d'etats n'y sont pas impliqués et certaines formations sont sans relief ou perspective. "Nous voulons prendre en considération toutes les nationalités et introduire des programmes spécifiques dans chaque pays pour que les jeunes soient rééllement branchés" sur la question, demande-t-il. A ce forum jeudi, certains survivants d'auschwitz et leurs libérateurs, ex-soldats de l'armée rouge, témoigneront devant nombre de jeunes. Pour M. Kantor, il faut séparer ce million de juifs morts à Auschwitz, devenu le symbole de la Shoah, du reste des 50 millions de victimes européennes du conflit "Dans l'holocauste, les gens ont été tués parce qu'ils étaient juifs, ce qui en fait des victimes de la guerre différentes".

8 Un forum international pour enseigner Auschwitz aux générations à venir January 27, 2005 CRACOVIE (Pologne) - Des dirigeants de nombreux pays, d'anciens détenus du camps de la mort nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau et leurs libérateurs de l'armée rouge se sont réunis jeudi à Cracovie pour s'engager à enseigner la leçon de l'holocauste aux générations à venir. Le forum "Let my people live" (Laissez vivre mon peuple), organisé par le Congrès juif européen (CJE), le mémorial de Yad Vachem à Jérusalem et le ministère polonais de la Culture, a ouvert jeudi les manifestations du 60ème anniversaire de la libération d'auschwitz. Selon le souhait du président du CJE, Moshé Kantor, ce forum doit donner un "départ d'efforts d'éducation sur l'holocauste à travers toute l'europe". Le souvenir tragique du génocide de la Seconde guerre mondiale a été évoqué au théâtre Slowacki à Cracovie à travers des documentaires, ainsi que par des témoignages de survivants d'auschwitz, dont le Prix Nobel de la Paix Elie Wiesel, et de leurs libérateurs représentés notamment par Anatoly Shapiro, 92 ans, le commandant russe qui avait mené ses soldats à Auschwitz le 27 janvier Dans leurs discours, les présidents polonais Aleksander Kwasniewski, russe Vladimir Poutine, israélien Moshé Katzav, ukrainien Victor Iouchtchenko et le vice-président américain Dick Cheney ont déploré la persistance dans le monde du racisme et de la haine. "La triste leçon des crimes nazi n'a toujours pas été bien entendue", a regretté le chef de l'etat polonais. "Même en Russie qui a fait plus que d'autres pour sauver les autres nations, même chez nous on voit des manifestations de cette maladie et j'en ai honte moi aussi", a reconnu M. Poutine. Il a promis que "la Russie combattra toujours ces phénomènes", avant de lancer un appel à l'unité de la communauté mondiale. Le président ukrainien, après avoir évoqué avec émotion le souvenir de son père, ancien prisonnier d'auschwitz qui avait survécu à sa détention en 1944, a promis de "faire en sorte qu'il n'y ait plus jamais en Ukraine d'antisémitisme, de xénophobie et de haine entre les gens".

9 S'adressant aux dirigeants du monde, aux anciens détenus, à leurs libérateurs soviétiques d'il y a 60 ans et aux jeunes, Elie Wiesel, leur a demandé de diffuser le souvenir de l'holocauste à travers le monde. "Vous devez sauvegarder la mémoire de ces événements tragiques et la transmettre au monde entier. Vous êtes nos émissaires", a dit cet ancien prisonnier d'auschwitz, alors que M. Katzav évoquait sa "peur du négationnisme de l'holocauste". "Nous avons peur d'une compréhension déformée de l'histoire dans les esprits des jeunes", a déclaré le président israélien. Une jeune juive américaine de 20 ans qui assistait au forum, Rachel Orange, étudiante à l'université de Jérusalem, a confié à l'afp:"nous sommes la dernière génération qui peut encore parler avec les survivants. Nous avons la responsabilité de transmettre leur message aux générations futures, nous avons le devoir de souvenir et d'éducation envers les autres".

10 Survivors, world leaders gather to remember victims, underline lessons of Holocaust on Auschwitz liberation anniversary By DAVID McHUGH, Associated Press Writer January 26, 2005 OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) - Vandalized Jewish graves in western Europe. Growing support for extreme-right parties in Germany. Comments by France's far-right leader playing down the evils of the Nazi occupation. Decades after World War II, many think the lessons of the Holocaust still need reinforcing in Europe. Survivors from Auschwitz, gathered for Thursday's 60th anniversary of the Nazi death camp's liberation, vowed to keep telling their story to make sure that happens. Trudy Spira, who came from Venezuela for the ceremonies, said Wednesday renewed efforts to educate people about the dangers of hatred were even more important as the generation that experienced the Holocaust ages. "It's very important, you are the last generation that can talk to the survivors, we are every day less," said Spira, who was deported to Auschwitz with her family as an 11-year-old from Slovakia in An estimated 1 million Holocaust survivors are still alive. "We can give living testimony... to let the world know, to try to get them to learn even though they don't, so that it doesn't happen again," Spira, 72, said at a news conference held by the European Jewish Forum in Krakow, about an hour's drive from Oscwiecim, the town where the camp is located. Romanian-born Auschwitz survivor Olly Ritterband from Copenhagen, Denmark, whose book "Will To Survive" is read in Danish schools, made the painful effort for her father, who died at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. "For more than 30 years, I couldn't speak about the Holocaust," said Ritterband, 80, who lost 70 relatives in the Holocaust. "This is the Kaddish for my father," she said, referring to the Jewish prayer for the dead. "I don't want to write. I was crying the whole time but I did it." Leaders including Vice President Dick Cheney, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac and Israeli President Moshe Katsav are to light candles and hear

11 interfaith prayers at the sprawling camp to mark the arrival of advancing Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945, as World War II neared its end. Germany's President Horst Koehler will attend but won't speak at the main ceremony in acknowledgment of Germany's role as perpetrator of the Holocaust. He is to address a youth forum about the Holocaust in Krakow. Some 1.5 million people, most of them Jews from across Europe, died in gas chambers or of disease, starvation, abuse and exhaustion at Auschwitz and neighboring Birkenau -- the most notorious of the death camps set up by Adolf Hitler to carry out his "final solution," the murder of Europe's Jewish population. Six million Jews died in the Nazi camps, along with several million others, including Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, homosexuals and political opponents of the Nazis. Reports in western Europe of increasing anti-jewish incidents such as vandalizing graves and a walkout last week by members of a small German far-right party from an Auschwitz commemoration in the Saxony state legislature are cited as examples of why it's important to go on teaching about the Holocaust. Earlier this week, a group of nationalist Russian lawmakers called for a sweeping investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations and punishing officials who support them, accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and saying they provoke anti-semitism. In Moscow on Tuesday, Rabbi Adolf Shayevich condemned the lawmakers for their accusations. The prosecutor general's office later said no investigation into the lawmakers' claims would be made because the letter in which they were made had been retracted. In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, caused an uproar this month when he was quoted by a newspaper as saying the Nazi occupation "was not particularly inhuman, even if there were a few blunders." Moshe Kantor, chairman of the European Jewish Congress, said incidents such as the Saxony walkout were challenges to education. "The weakest department of human memory is historical memory," Kantor said at a news conference with the survivors in Krakow. "To have this memory we must work hard." "The nature of all these attempts to diminish the results and the events of the Holocaust are the same, the shortage of historical memory, and xenophobia and nationalism in the local countries." Cheney, in Krakow ahead of the ceremonies, said that "we will never forget" the dead and that the survivors, by telling their stories, guarded against a repeat of the horrors. He noted that the horrors of World War II took place not in a remote section of the globe, but in the middle of Europe.

12 "Today, many Holocaust survivors have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren," Cheney said. "That I believe is the greatest victory of all. Evil did not have the final say. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who won't attend, said in a speech in Jerusalem that the lesson to be learned was that the world "didn't lift a finger" to stop the Holocaust. He called critics of Israeli measures in its struggle against Palestinian militants "new anti-semites." Sharon said Jews learned a lesson from the genocide that they can only rely on themselves. In Poland, a recent survey indicated that only about half of the population was aware that the majority of Auschwitz victims were Jewish -- a holdover mentality from the communist era, when official historical accounts sometimes played down Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. During communist rule, a plaque that stood at Auschwitz-Birkenau failed to mention that Jews were killed there.

13 GAYS AMONG HONORED HOLOCAUST VICTIMS By DAVID McHUGH, Associated Press Writer January 27, 2005 OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) - Vandalized Jewish graves in western Europe. Growing support for extreme-right parties in Germany. Comments by France's far-right leader playing down the evils of the Nazi occupation. Decades after World War II, many think the lessons of the Holocaust still need reinforcing in Europe. Survivors from Auschwitz, gathered for Thursday's 60th anniversary of the Nazi death camp's liberation, vowed to keep telling their story to make sure that happens. Trudy Spira, who came from Venezuela for the ceremonies, said Wednesday renewed efforts to educate people about the dangers of hatred were even more important as the generation that experienced the Holocaust ages. "It's very important, you are the last generation that can talk to the survivors, we are every day less," said Spira, who was deported to Auschwitz with her family as an 11-year-old from Slovakia in An estimated 1 million Holocaust survivors are still alive. "We can give living testimony... to let the world know, to try to get them to learn even though they don't, so that it doesn't happen again," Spira, 72, said at a news conference held by the European Jewish Forum in Krakow, about an hour's drive from Oscwiecim, the town where the camp is located. Romanian-born Auschwitz survivor Olly Ritterband from Copenhagen, Denmark, whose book "Will To Survive" is read in Danish schools, made the painful effort for her father, who died at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. "For more than 30 years, I couldn't speak about the Holocaust," said Ritterband, 80, who lost 70 relatives in the Holocaust. "This is the Kaddish for my father," she said, referring to the Jewish prayer for the dead. "I don't want to write. I was crying the whole time but I did it." Leaders including Vice President Dick Cheney, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac and Israeli President Moshe Katsav are to light candles and hear interfaith prayers at the sprawling camp to mark the arrival of advancing Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945, as World War II neared its end.

14 Germany's President Horst Koehler will attend but won't speak at the main ceremony in acknowledgment of Germany's role as perpetrator of the Holocaust. He is to address a youth forum about the Holocaust in Krakow. Some 1.5 million people, most of them Jews from across Europe, died in gas chambers or of disease, starvation, abuse and exhaustion at Auschwitz and neighboring Birkenau -- the most notorious of the death camps set up by Adolf Hitler to carry out his "final solution," the murder of Europe's Jewish population. Six million Jews died in the Nazi camps, along with several million others, including Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, homosexuals and political opponents of the Nazis. Reports in western Europe of increasing anti-jewish incidents such as vandalizing graves and a walkout last week by members of a small German far-right party from an Auschwitz commemoration in the Saxony state legislature are cited as examples of why it's important to go on teaching about the Holocaust. Earlier this week, a group of nationalist Russian lawmakers called for a sweeping investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations and punishing officials who support them, accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and saying they provoke anti-semitism. In Moscow on Tuesday, Rabbi Adolf Shayevich condemned the lawmakers for their accusations. The prosecutor general's office later said no investigation into the lawmakers' claims would be made because the letter in which they were made had been retracted. In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, caused an uproar this month when he was quoted by a newspaper as saying the Nazi occupation "was not particularly inhuman, even if there were a few blunders." Moshe Kantor, chairman of the European Jewish Congress, said incidents such as the Saxony walkout were challenges to education. "The weakest department of human memory is historical memory," Kantor said at a news conference with the survivors in Krakow. "To have this memory we must work hard." "The nature of all these attempts to diminish the results and the events of the Holocaust are the same, the shortage of historical memory, and xenophobia and nationalism in the local countries." Cheney, in Krakow ahead of the ceremonies, said that "we will never forget" the dead and that the survivors, by telling their stories, guarded against a repeat of the horrors. He noted that the horrors of World War II took place not in a remote section of the globe, but in the middle of Europe. "Today, many Holocaust survivors have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren,"

15 Cheney said. "That I believe is the greatest victory of all. Evil did not have the final say." Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who won't attend, said in a speech in Jerusalem that the lesson to be learned was that the world "didn't lift a finger" to stop the Holocaust. He called critics of Israeli measures in its struggle against Palestinian militants "new anti-semites." Sharon said Jews learned a lesson from the genocide that they can only rely on themselves. In Poland, a recent survey indicated that only about half of the population was aware that the majority of Auschwitz victims were Jewish -- a holdover mentality from the communist era, when official historical accounts sometimes played down Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. During communist rule, a plaque that stood at Auschwitz-Birkenau failed to mention that Jews were killed there.

16 Cheney says Holocaust is a reminder that 'evil is real' By Deb Riechmann January 27, 2005 KRAKOW, Poland Vice President Dick Cheney remembered the Holocaust on Thursday, saying that the mass murder that went unanswered until Nazi death camps were liberated exactly 60 years ago is reminder that evil must be faced down in the world Thursday. "The story of the camps remind us that evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted," Cheney said. "We are reminded that anti-semitism may begin with words but rarely stops with words and the message of intolerance and hatred must be opposed before it turns into acts of horror." While he didn't draw the comparison directly, the subtext of Cheney's message melded with the theme of President Bush's Inauguration Day speech about freedom versus tyranny as well as one of his previous State of the Union addresses when he called Iraq, North Korea and Iran the "axis of evil." After his remarks at the international forum "Let my people live" held at a city theater in Krakow, Cheney was being driven to two death camps where Nazis murdered 1.5 million people. Cheney was participating in a candle-lighting liberation and interfaith prayer ceremony along with scores of world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac and Israel's Moshe Katsav. There are two camps about a one-hour drive south of Krakow: Auschwitz I and Birkenau, a much larger complex ringed by birch trees (birken in German) for which it was named. Still visible are rail tracks on which prisoners in cramped railroad cars were transported into the came and forced into slave labor, turned into guinea pigs for medical experiments or killed in crematoria. The Soviet Army freed prisoners at the camps on Jan. 27, 1945 as the war neared its end. Between 1 million and 1.5 million prisoners most of them Jews perished in gas chambers or died of starvation and disease at Auschwitz. Overall, 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. "On this day in 1945, inside a prison for the innocent, liberators arrived and looked into the faces of thousands near death while miles beyond the camp, many thousands more were being led on a death march in the winter cold," Cheney said. "Inside barbed wire and behind high walls, soldiers found baths that were not baths, hospitals meant not to heal but to kill and the belongings of hundreds of thousands who had vanished."

17 He reminded his listeners, many of them young people, that the cruelty of the death camps did not happen in a faraway corner of the world, but in the "very heart of the civilized world." "The death camps were created by men with a high opinion of themselves some of them welleducated and possessed of refined manners but without conscience," he said. "And where there is no conscience, there is no tolerance toward others... no defense against evil... and no limit to the crimes that follow."

18 Hell camp remembered; Never again: survivors January 28, 2005 KRAKOW -- Leaders from 30 countries gathered overnight to remember the victims of the Holocaust on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski and Israeli President Moshe Katsav were to join survivors at the infamous railway siding at the nearby Birkenau camp. That was where Nazi doctors chose who could be worked to death and who was to go immediately to the gas chambers. Most went directly to their deaths. About 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, died in gas chambers or of disease, starvation, abuse and exhaustion at Auschwitz and Birkenau -- the most notorious of the death camps set up by Adolf Hitler to carry out his "final solution" -- the elimination of Europe's Jewish population. Soviet troops reached the camp on January 27, 1945, finding just 7000 survivors, many barely alive. The retreating Nazis had driven most of the prisoners who could stillwalk out into the snow on a "death march" toward camps further west. Six million Jews died in the Nazi camps, as well as millions of Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, homosexuals and Nazi opponents. Vice-President Dick Cheney was to represent the United States. Germany's President Horst Koehler was to attend, but not to speak -- an acknowledgement of Germany's role in the Holocaust. He was to speak to a youth forum instead. The forum, organised by the European Jewish Congress, brings young people from around the world face to face with Auschwitz survivors and the Soviet soldiers who freed the camp, many of them in their 80s. It could mark "the last chance we have to gather this cross-section of people together in the same room," said Moshe Kantor, chairman of the European Jewish Congress. Survivors said each new generation needed to be educated about the Holocaust. "It's very important. You are the last generation that can talk to the survivors. We are every day less," Trudy Spira, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 with her family as an 11-year-old from Slovakia, told reporters. "We can give living testimony... to let the world know, to try to get them to learn even though they don't, so that it doesn't happen again."

19 Wednesday, January 26, 2005 Auschwitz commemorations begin with prayer service AUSCHWITZ, Poland Jan 26 Events to mark the liberation 60 years ago of the Auschwitz death camp began Wednesday with an ecumenical prayer service in a southern Polish village where the Nazis dumped ashes of many of the victims of the camp's gas chambers and crematoria. Around 100 people, including survivors of the camp, gathered in Harmeze, five kilometers (three miles) from the main Auschwitz camp, on Wednesday morning in freezing weather and snow to pray for all victims of World War II, including the at least 1.1 million who died at Auschwitz, most of them Jews. On Thursday, world leaders, survivors and former Soviet soldiers who freed them will gather for an emotional ceremony at a memorial wedged between the ruins of two of Auschwitz-Birkenau's gas chambers. The main ceremony will begin amid tight security on Thursday at 2:30 pm (1330 GMT) at the memorial erected to the memory of the men, women and children who died at the camp. Most of them were Jews sent to their deaths immediately on arrival at the Nazi death factory. Because many of the victims were "selected" by the SS for immediate extermination in specially built gas chambers and they were never registered at Auschwitz, making it impossible for historians to say precisely how many people died here. The actual death toll is believed to be as high as two million. Among those who will address the main ceremony are former Polish foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski -- Auschwitz prisoner number who will give a speech on behalf of the tens of thousands of Poles who died at the camp, not counting the hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews. Former French health minister Simone Veil -- Auschwitz prisoner number will speak on behalf of Jewish victims and Romani Rose, president of Germany's Central Council of Sinti and Roma, for victims from Europe's gypsy community. On Wednesday, Vice President Dick Cheney who is representing the United States at the ceremonies, told a small gathering of survivors of the death camp that the world must teach its youth tolerance and moral courage to avoid a repetition of the Holocaust.

20 "We have to remind our youth that these great evils of history were perpetrated not in some remote uncivilised world but in the very heart of civilised Europe," Cheney said said at a museum in Krakow that recounts the history of Jews in southern Poland. "We must teach the values of tolerance, decency and moral courage. In every generation the free nations must maintain the will, the strength to fight tyranny," he said. Moshe Kantor, head of the European Jewish Congress, which will host a forum on Thursday bringing together young people from around the world and the elderly survivors of Auschwitz and former Soviet soldiers who freed them, earlier warned against rising anti-semitism in Europe. "The situation in Europe is similar to what happened just before World War II," Kantor told AFP in an interview in Krakow. "The speed with which the Kristallnacht of 1938 turned into the infamous Wannsee conference of 1942 was just a historical second," he said. The Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, was a nationwide pogrom launched in November 1938 in Germany, targeting Jews, while the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, brought together Nazi leaders to discuss the "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe." "From broken windows we reached the death camps in the blink of an eye. Today, we are standing on pieces of crystal in Europe again," Kantor said. As the morning prayer service began, a group of rabbis from Canada and the United States staged a protest outside a church in the village of Brzezinka - Birkenau in German - near the memorial where Thursday's ceremony will be held. Braving snow and temperatures of minus six degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit), they held placards declaring "No to a church at the world's biggest Jewish cemetery" and "The Birkenau church desecrates the memory of one million Jews." Israeli President Moshe Katzav was among world leaders already in Krakow, where he held talks with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and braved the cold to visit the memorial at Rakowicki cemetery to British soldiers who died in Poland during World War II. Ukraine's new President Viktor Yushchenko has also arrived and met Cheney over dinner in Krakow. But Russian leader Vladimir Putin's arrival was put back until Thursday as a snowstorm socked Krakow airport.