VIDEO: Holocaust Memorial Day marks 69th anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation
11:08am Monday 27th January 2014 in News By Leigh MarlesToday is Holocaust Memorial Day, marking the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
In January of 2008, Globe photographer David Gennard was invited to Poland to take part in an initiative designed to educate school children about the Nazi death camp.
His videos recorded the deeply moving tour of the camp, as well as interviews with local pupils, and were later published on the official website of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum.
Today, events will be staged across the country in remembrance of victims of the persecution as well genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.
This year's Holocaust Memorial Day marks the 69th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi’s camps.
Also :
Holocaust Remembrance Day Marked At Auschwitz-Birkenau By Survivors And Israeli OfficialsOSWIECIM, Poland (AP) — Auschwitz survivors and Israeli officials are marking 69 years since the liberation of the Nazi death camp, in a ceremony that includes a large group of Israeli lawmakers.
The ceremony Monday at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial takes place on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the United Nations in memory of some 6 million Holocaust victims, and some 1.5 million victims of Auschwitz, who were mostly Jews.
Some 20 survivors laid a wreath at the former camp's Death Wall, where inmates were executed. Some 60 members of the Knesset, or half of the Israeli legislature, have joined the survivors for the ceremonies. They are also to meet their Polish counterparts and others in an unprecedented session held outside Israel.
Obama honors Holocaust Remembrance Day
President Obama urged the nation and world Monday to remember the victims on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"Each year on this day the world comes together to commemorate a barbaric crime unique in human history," Obama said in a statement. "We recall six million Jews and millions of other innocent victims who were murdered in Nazi death camps. We mourn lives cut short and communities torn apart."
Saying there remains room for hope on this solemn day, Obama noted that Jan. 27 is also the date on which Auschwitz was liberated 69 years ago.
"The noble acts of courage performed by liberators, rescuers, and the Righteous Among Nations remind us that we are never powerless," Obama said. "In our lives, we always have choices. In our time, this means choosing to confront bigotry and hatred in all of its forms, especially anti-Semitism."
Obama also said people should condemn "any attempts to deny the occurrence of the Holocaust," and "doing our part to ensure that survivors receive some measure of justice and the support they need to live out their lives in dignity."
The rest of Obama's statement:
"On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Michelle and I join the American people and our friends in the State of Israel and around the world as we reaffirm our obligation not just to bear witness, but to act.
"May God bless the memory of the millions, and may God grant us the strength and courage to make real our solemn vow: Never forget. Never again."
And we should never forget the later-day Nazis still among us, trying to organize on multiple fronts under the rubric of "free speech".
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