January 27 is the United Nations’ International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It marks the anniversary of the liberation, in 1945, of the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Polish President Andrzej Duda honoured the occasion on Twitter, posting a picture of himself holding a sheet of paper with the motto: “We Remember/Pamiętamy.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Facebook that the memorial day was established in 2005 “so that humanity never forgets and learns a lesson from this horrendous crime.”
He added: “This crime wasn’t committed by some nameless Nazis, who were 'only following orders,' but by the officials of the Nazi German state, who implemented their devilish plan with methodical, deliberate effectiveness.”
Morawiecki also said in his Facebook post that “the Polish state guards the truth, which cannot be relativised in any way.”
He added that the memory of Holocaust victims “represents an important part of our national identity,” and that “thanks to the courage of the Polish people, the cry from Auschwitz reverberated around the world.”
Holocaust survivors and officials were set to gather for ceremonies in southern Poland on Thursday afternoon to mark the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp operated in German-occupied southern Poland between May 1940 and January 1945. It was the largest of the German Nazi concentration and death camps during World War II.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, as well as Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and people of many other nationalities, perished there before the camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945.
The Holocaust is the name given to the extermination of European Jews by the German Third Reich during World War II. The number of victims is believed to be around 6 million, with children accounting for a third of the total. Among those killed by the Nazi Germans, between 2.6 million and 3.3 million were Polish Jews, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP