January 27, 2005 German Nazi concentration camp survivors and some of the world leaders assembled to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau dead camp built and ran on the Poland occupied territory by Nazi Germany during the 2WW. The horrible crimes were committed there and between 1.1 and 1.5 million people perished between 1940 and 1945. This year ceremony at the site of the main death camp started with the mournful whistle of an imaginary train on the tracks that brought the deportees to their deaths. Elderly survivors, many accompanied by younger relatives, attended the ceremony between the rusting barbed-wire fences, facing a monument to the victims. Polish Girl Scouts brought blankets and coffee to the survivors sitting in the freezing weather.

"Where we are now gathered, no words can render the entire terrifying truth about the horrors committed in this place," said Aleksander Kwasniewski, president of Poland. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a survivor who later became Poland's foreign minister, said: "But we must speak, remember, cry out: This was hell on Earth. For a former inmate of Auschwitz, it is an unimaginable and overwhelming emotion to be able to speak in this cemetery without graves, the largest one in the history of Europe. I never imagined I would outlive Hitler or survive World War II." More than two dozen presidents, prime ministers, members of royalty and other leaders sat in the bitterly cold open air into the night to remember the 6 million victims of Nazi camps. Among those attending were Vice President Cheney, German President Horst Koehler, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac, Britain's Prince Edward and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Belgium's King Albert. Vatican representatives read
a message from Pope John Paul II.

While the ceremony was designed to keep memories of the Nazi Germany death camps alive, it took place against a backdrop of recent events in Europe that underscore the ways in which the continent is still coming to grips with the lessons of the era. In Germany, where denying the genocide against Jews is a crime, a political party that sympathizes with neo-Nazis walked out of a Holocaust memorial service in Saxony last week to protest what its leaders called lack of recognition of the large numbers of German civilians killed by Allied bombers during World War II. In Russia, two dozen members of the parliament recently signed a letter blaming Jews for "provoking" anti-Semitism and asking the government to ban Jewish groups on grounds of extremism. In France, nationalist politician Jean-Marie Le Pen -- who won 18 percent of the vote in the presidential election three years ago -- said in a magazine interview published this month that the severity of the Nazi occupation of his country had been exaggerated, calling it "not especially inhumane." Around the same time, Britain's Prince Harry showed up at a party dressed as a Nazi, dealing a huge public embarrassment to the House of Windsor. It dispatched Harry's uncle, Prince Edward, to Auschwitz as its representative for the ceremonies.

"Sixty years later, we face a reemergence of anti-Semitism in Europe," said Israeli President Moshe Katsav. "Is it possible that the deterrent power of the Shoah has weakened?" he asked, using the Hebrew word for Holocaust. "The answer is in the hands of Europe's leaders, it is in the hands of the educators and historians. It is in our hands." Germany's President Koehler solemnly carried a candle at the ceremony in memory of the victims, but he made no remarks. It is customary at observances of this sort for German representatives to attend as acknowledgment that the crimes were the work of Germans, but to remain silent. French President Jacques Chirac, the first leader of his country to acknowledge French complicity in the Holocaust, said the European Union would stand united to counter anti-Semitism, Reuters reported. The leaders placed candles at the monument to the victims of Auschwitz as they left.

The Auschwitz complex consisted of three main camps and as many as 36 sub-camps. Prisoners were gassed, shot, starved or killed by other means at what became the Third Reich's deadliest killing field. About 1 million of the victims were Jews from all the countries of occupied Europe, over 140,000 Poles, approximately 20,000 Gypsies from several European countries, about 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and over ten thousand prisoners of other nationalities. About 2,000 aging survivors of Auschwitz -- still bearing Nazi-inscribed identification tattoos on their forearms -- braved painful memories as well as the cold to return for the ceremony. They sat huddled in thick blankets on chairs as smoke rose from a dozen giant mesh pillars filled with blazing charcoal,
a reminder of how the Germans methodically eliminated any trace of the victims. "I am not here to talk about what happened. My only aim is to light a candle for my mother, whose ashes are who knows where in this camp," said Jan Wojciech Topolewski, a former prisoner whose mother died in Auschwitz. And another Pole, Franciszek Jozefiak 80 said, "Today I'm remembering my father, gassed here. I'm remembering the atrocious things they did to us. "To explain what happened is impossible," said Ted Lehman, a native of a southern Polish village who was taken to Auschwitz at age 16 but escaped death when his captors sent him to a slave labor camp in Slovakia to manufacture munitions for the German army. He lost his entire family in the Holocaust but shrugs his shoulders when asked what he thinks of European politicians and public figures who diminish the reality of what happened. "They don't bother me, these things," said Lehman, who immigrated to the United States after the war.

When Soviet troops liberated the camp 60 years ago, they discovered about 7,000 inmates who had been left behind by the Nazis. One of them was a girl named Eva, a 10-year-old Romanian Jew and a victim of the gruesome medical experiments conducted by Auschwitz's head physician, Josef Mengele. Now married and living in United States, Eva Mozes Kor has returned to the camp several times over the past two decades, to make sure that others remember what happened but also to celebrate her survival. "I know most people won't understand this," she said, clutching a black-and-white photograph taken by a Soviet soldier that shows her on liberation day, standing inside a barbed-wire enclosure. "But I have forgiven the Nazis. I have forgiven Mengele. I have forgiven everybody. I no longer carry the burden of pain. I have given myself the gift of forgiveness."

Cheney was not among the speakers at the ceremony on the grounds of Auschwitz. But at a Holocaust memorial forum earlier in the day in the city of Krakow, he said the lessons of how the Allied powers confronted the Third Reich were still applicable today. "Gathered in this place, we are reminded that such immense cruelty did not happen in a faraway, uncivilized corner of the world, but rather in the very heart of the civilized world," Cheney said. "The death camps were created by men with a high opinion of themselves -- some of them well educated and possessed of refined manners -- but without conscience. The story of the camps reminds us that evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted." While Cheney has made no overt link between Germany fascism and modern terrorism during his trip, Putin in his remarks at Auschwitz directly connected the two in an apparent reference to Russia's struggles with Islamic separatists in Chechnya. "We shall not only remember the past but also be aware of all the threats of the modern world," Putin said. "Terrorism is among them, and it is no less dangerous and cunning than fascism. As there were no 'good' and 'bad' fascists, there cannot be 'good' and 'bad' terrorists. Any double standards here are absolutely unacceptable and deadly dangerous for civilization."
"I would like to say to all the people on the earth: This should never be repeated, ever," said Maj. Anatoly Shapiro, 92, who commanded the first troops who entered Auschwitz. The forum at Krakow's Slovacki theater opened with applause for Shapiro and three other Soviet army veterans who helped liberate Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. "I saw the faces of the people we liberated -- they went through hell," Shapiro said in a recorded video greeting from New York, where he lives. He was too ill to travel to the commemoration. Poland president A.Kwasniewski awarded one of the veterans, Yakov Vinnichenko, the Polish Officer's Cross. Two others, Genri Koptev-Gomolov and Nikolai Chertkov, were awarded the Cavalry Cross of the Polish Republic. "These commemorations are intended to promote knowledge of Auschwitz as widely as possible and bring the truth about the camps to the younger generation," Kwasniewski told Polish state radio.
Russian president Putin acknowledged to the morning gathering that anti-Semitism and xenophobia had surfaced in his country. Tackling an issue the Kremlin has been accused of failing to confront directly, Putin said many in the world should be ashamed of new manifestations of anti-Semitism six decades after the defeat of fascism. "Even in our country, in Russia, which did more than any to combat fascism, which did most to save the Jewish people, even in our country we sometimes unfortunately see manifestations of this problem and I, too, am ashamed of that," Putin said to long applause. Ukraine's newly elected president, Viktor Yushchenko, was greeted with a standing ovation when he entered the hall. He said he brought his children to the event and spoke of his father, a wounded Soviet prisoner of war who survived Auschwitz. "This is a sacred place for me and my family," Yushchenko said. "This is a place where Andrei Yushchenko, my father, suffered. There will never be a Jewish question in my country, I vow that. Never again".

In Brussels, members of the European Parliament stood in a minute of silence to pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust and to mark the anniversary. "Everyone is surprised such a thing happened, but it did," said EU Parliament President Josep Borrell. "It's difficult to pay just memory to it. It is a battle against the weakness of memory, something which should never happen again."

The EU assembly then passed a resolution by 617 votes to 0, with 10 abstentions, condemning anti-Semitism and racism and paying homage to the victims of Nazi Germany. And in Germany, a Holocaust survivor warned his countrymen to be vigilant against anti-Semitism, particularly in the Muslim world. Arno Lustiger told German leaders gathered in parliament for the national Holocaust Remembrance Day that everyone must fight anti-Semitism. Parliament president Wolfgang Thierse called on Germans to fight continued anti-Semitism in Germany, especially in light of the regional resurgence of the far-right National Democratic Party -- which took nearly 10 percent of the vote in elections in the eastern state of Saxony last year.