World remembers Holocaust as antisemitism rises in pandemic
ABC News
Holocaust survivors have recalled their agony to a world that they fear is forgetting on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
WARSAW, Poland -- Survivors recalled their agony to a world they fear is forgetting, Israel's parliamentary speaker wept in the German parliament and politicians warned of a resurgence of antisemitism on Thursday's International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The day falls on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps where Nazi Germany carried out its Final Solution seeking to murder the Jewish people of Europe.
At the memorial site in Poland, which was subjected to a brutal German occupation during World War II, a small number of survivors gathered in an auditorium. Attendance at the yearly event was sharply curtailed amid Europe's coronavirus surge. Others joined online.
Nazi German forces killed 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and others, and the site today stands as a powerful symbol of how hatred and indifference led to the Holocaust.