March of the Living marks Holocaust by AFP / BBC / Reuters 3:59pm 6th May, 2005   May 07, 2005    Tears for dead in march of the living. (AFP)    Birkenau, Poland: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged thousands of people at a ceremony to mark the liberation of Auschwitz to let their tears flow and never forget the atrocities committed at the concentration camp.    "You are standing here with your heads bowed, probably with eyes filled with tears. Do not stop those tears. Let them flow and remember them," Mr Sharon told more than 20,000 people who walked through steady rain the 3km from Auschwitz to Birkenau.    The March of the Living has become an annual event to recall what took place at the concentration camp in southern Poland.    "Always remember the victims, never forget the murderers. Do not forget how millions of Jews were marched to their deaths while the world stood silent, how thousands of Jews floundered in stormy waters searching in vain for sanctuary," Mr Sharon said. "Do not let the world forget - remember the silence of the world."    Auschwitz survivor David Kleiman, 87, said he entirely agreed with Mr Sharon. "I'll never forget how hundreds of American planes flew over Auschwitz and never dropped a single bomb."    The commemoration was held amid the rubble of gas chambers, where the Nazis slaughtered at least 1.1million men, women and children, mostly European Jews, as well as communists and other opponents of the Nazis.    "A few steps away from here innumerable victims were driven from sealed cattle-cars straight to the so-called showers, where in unspeakable agony they watched each other as they tried to catch a last breath and were robbed of the last dignity granted to all humans -- the dignity of dying in peace," writer Elie Wiesel, an Auschwitz inmate, told the crowd.    At the sound of three ram's horn shofars, the crowd rose to pay silent tribute to the 6 million Jews, including 1.5 million children, who were slaughtered by the Nazis. As a narrator intoned the names of the victims of the most infamous of the Nazi death camps, the marchers filed under Birkenau's notorious watchtower and into the sprawl of green fields and spartan brick barracks.    ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE AT 15-YEAR HIGH IN 2004. (Reuters)    Anti-Semitic violence and vandalism hit a 15-year high worldwide in 2004, driven mostly by a rise in attacks by marginalised Muslim immigrants in developed countries, a new Israeli study said on Wednesday. In its annual report, Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth Institute cited Russia, Ukraine and Belarus of not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism but said the European Union had stepped up its efforts.    The study cited frustration among young Muslim immigrants in countries such as France, Britain and Canada as the main factor in increased anti-Jewish incidents but said anger over Israel's handling of a Palestinian uprising had also contributed.    Researchers recorded 482 anti-Semitic incidents in 2004, including physical assaults and desecration of Jewish graves plus a further 19 "major attacks" -- defined as intent to kill -- such as shootings and arson.This compared with 330 incidents and 30 major attacks in 2003, a combined increase of 39 percent. The 2004 figures showed a more than sixfold rise since 1989, when the institute began collecting statistics. There were 31 major attacks that year.    "Jews tend to be assaulted in countries where groups of young immigrants, mainly Muslims but others too, are not well integrated and envy the perceived success of the Jews such as in France, England and Canada," the report said.    It said in countries such as the United States, Germany and Russia, far-right groups had been responsible for vandalism against Jewish communal institutions, monuments and cemeteries.The report said while the number of major attacks had declined in recent years, street assaults and targeting of individual Jews was on the rise. The study showed the sharpest increase in anti-Semitic violence since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000 after talks collapsed over creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It said anti-Semitic attacks had not declined so far this year despite a ceasefire declared in February.    "Virulent anti-Israel propaganda and anti-Americanism accompanied by anti-Semitic motifs continue to be the main factors inciting anti-Jewish violence," the study said. "Russia, Ukraine and Belarus have not demonstrated their clear determination to fight anti-Semitism on the domestic front." Perpetrators of anti-Semitic crimes in those countries tend to be labelled by officials as "terrorists or hooligans without reference to racist or anti-Semitic motivation", the study said. But it said that despite initial hesitancy, the EU was now taking steps to fight anti-Semitism, seeing it as a "threat not only to their Jewish citizens but to the democratic order". The report was released in the Jewish state on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day when Israelis honour six million Jews killed by the Nazis in World War Two.    İReuters    28 January, 2005,    World marks Auschwitz liberation. (BBC)    Holocaust survivors and world leaders have held an emotional ceremony in Poland, 60 years after the liberation of the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp. The ceremony began with a train whistle on the railway track that took more than a million people to their deaths.    Thousands gathered in heavy snow next to the site of the German gas chambers, where Jews and others were murdered. "It seems as if we can still hear the dead crying out," Israeli President Moshe Katsav told the crowd. "When I walk the ground of the concentration camps, I fear that I am walking on the ashes of the victims."    The Nazi regime murdered six million Jews and many others during what became known as the Holocaust. Auschwitz, was the largest of the Nazi camps, where 1.1 million people died. It was liberated by the advancing Soviet army on the 27th of January 1945.    Expressing fears over a resurgence in anti-Semitism in Europe, Mr Katsav questioned whether the memory of the Holocaust had lost its power to deter attacks and insults against Jews. "The answer is in the hands of Europe's leaders, it is in the hands of the educators and the historians," he said.    Some of the elderly survivors sat wrapped in blankets against the driving snow for up to two hours before the ceremony began. Some wore tags displaying their prison number - numbers that are still tattooed on their bodies.    "I'm number 4662," said one elderly woman. "We had no names here, and I have a hard time calling myself with my real name here. It's too painful."    Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the crowd. But German President Horst Koehler remained silent, in recognition of Germany's role as perpetrator of the Holocaust. Touring the camp with survivors before the ceremony, he said: "We have the duty to ensure that something like this never happens again - and we Germans in particular."    In the nearby Polish city of Krakow, before the ceremony in Auschwitz, Russian President Vladmir Putin spoke out against anti-Semitism and admitted that it was a problem in his country. "Even in our country, in Russia, which did more than any to combat fascism, for the victory over 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," he said.    French President Jacques Chirac, opening an exhibit in honour of French victims, said his country must bear its responsibility for the deportation of Jews from Nazi-occupied France..    27 January, 2005    "Let us remember that we are on the site of the most gigantic cemetery in the world, a cemetery where there are no graves, no stones, but where the ashes of more than one million people lie."    Polish Culture Minister Waldemar Dabrowski, opening the Auschwitz ceremony    "I want to say to all people around the world - this should not happen again. I saw the faces of the people we liberated - they went through hell."    Anatoly Shapiro, Jewish Red Army commander whose troops liberated the camp    "This is the biggest cemetery for Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti. It must tell us that we have to come back here again and again. We must keep the memory of the worst crime in human history alive for those who were born later."    German President Horst Koehler    "The snow was falling like today. We were dressed in stripes and some of us had bare feet. These were horrible times."    Kazimierz Orlowski, 84-year-old former prisoner    "It's here, where absolute evil was perpetrated, that the will must resurface for a fraternal world, a world based on respect of man and his dignity."    Simone Veil, Auschwitz survivor and former French Health Minister    "We're in a place where no words can tell the truth about what happened... But they have to. This was hell on earth. The Holocaust is not only a tragedy of the Jewish people, it is a failure of humanity as a whole."    Moshe Katsav, Israeli President    "My father was a wounded soldier and he was in Auschwitz. He had a tattoo 11367 on his chest. I came here with my children and I hope I will come here with my grandchildren. This is a sacred place for me and my family. . There will never again be a Jewish question in my country. The tragedy of the past will never be repeated on the soil of Ukraine."    Viktor Yushchenko, Ukrainian President    "The people were liberated, mankind was not."    Shimon Peres, Deputy Israeli Prime Minister,.    "That attempt at the systematic destruction of an entire people falls like a shadow on the history of Europe and the whole world, it is a crime which will forever darken the history of humanity. May it serve, today and for the future, as a warning: there must be no yielding to ideologies which justify contempt for human dignity on the basis of race, colour, language or religion."    Pope John Paul II    "We remember above all that the Holocaust did not start with a concentration camp. It started with a brick through the shop window of a Jewish business, the desecration of a synagogue, the shout of racist abuse on the street."    British Prime Minister Tony Blair    "The lessons of the Holocaust are simple to understand, however hard they are to live. Never blame others for your troubles. A society is as large as the space it makes for the stranger. Cherish life. Fight for the rights of others."    Britain's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Visit the related web page
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