France24 - AFP, 6
May 2013
Former Polish prisoner Leshek Polkovski looks at part of a Second World War monument dedicated to Polish victims of the Nazis, at the former concentration camp Mauthausen, on May 5, 2013.
Former
Polish prisoner Leshek Polkovski looks at part of a Second World
War monument
dedicated to Polish victims of the Nazis, at the former
concentration camp
Mauthausen, on May 5, 2013.
|
Former Polish prisoner Leshek Polkovski looks at part of a Second World War monument dedicated to Polish victims of the Nazis, at the former concentration camp Mauthausen, on May 5, 2013.
AFP -
Leaders and Nazi camp survivors made a stirring appeal to combat racism as they
commemorated the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp here Sunday,
urging "never again."
"We
who weren't there cannot and may not forget. The numbers engraved on the arms
in Auschwitz are engraved on each of our souls," said Israel's Justice
Minister Tzipi Livni, who accompanied her father-in-law, himself a survivor of
Mauthausen, on the pilgrimage.
"I
came today as justice minister of the Jewish state to say together with you
"never again"," Livni told the international crowd.
"It is
not for us that we do not want the world to forget, it is for the future of
mankind."
The 68th
anniversary of the camp's liberation by the US army coincided with the
inauguration of a new visitor centre at Mauthausen, and was marked by a large
ceremony attended by the presidents of Poland and Hungary, Bronislaw Komorowski
and Janos Ader, Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and Russian State Duma
speaker Sergei Naryshkin.
Some 30
survivors of Mauthausen, some wearing the striped caps that were part of the
uniform given to inmates of the Nazi concentration camps, also took part in the
ceremony.
In a moving
moment, they deposited pictures and testimonies in a time capsule that will
become part of the new exhibit, as their harrowing stories were read out to the
public.
"This
is the right moment and the right place to make an urgent appeal to all who are
in a position of authority in Europe to learn from our tragic past and confront
each and every form of racism or anti-Semitism: decidedly, consistently and
clearly," Austrian President Heinz Fischer urged.
"That's
the minimum that should come out of this day."
David
Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee, also sounded words of warning,
pointing to rising anti-Semitism in Europe and the presence in a few
parliaments of xenophobic or anti-Semitic parties.
"We
must wake up. The words 'never again' must apply not just on commemorative
events but must apply 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he urged.
"We
each have a responsibility to ensure the words 'never again' truly mean 'never
again'. Not for the targets of Mauthausen, not for the Jewish people, not for
any people.
"Then
we can hand off to the next generation a more perfect and just world," he
said.
Some
200,000 people from 40 nations -- around a quarter of them Jewish, but also
Soviet civilians and 7,000 Republican Spaniards -- were incarcerated between
1938 and 1945 at Mauthausen, a stone fortress set in rolling hills next to the
Danube.
Around
90,000 didn't make it, perishing in back-breaking labour in granite quarries
from malnourishment, disease -- or shot by the guards, hanged, throttled,
beaten to a pulp or gassed.
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