More than 200,000 children were murdered at Auschwitz before it was liberated in 1945, according to Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in southern Poland.
In marking the anniversary, he said that the adult world had never before demonstrated so much heartlessness and evil to innocent children.
“This cannot be justified by any ideology, reckoning or politics,” Cywiński said.
“This year we want to dedicate the anniversary of liberation to the youngest victims of the camp,” he added.
Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in southern Poland. Photo: PAP/Łukasz Gągulski
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year's commemoration will exceptionally be held online, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum said.
LIVE broadcast of the official Auschwitz Memorial commemoration event of the 76th Anniversary of the Liberation of...
Posted by Auschwitz Memorial / Muzeum Auschwitz on Tuesday, January 26, 2021
At least 232,000 children and young people—including 216,000 Jews, 11,000 Roma, about 3,000 Poles, more than 1,000 Belarusians, and several hundred Russians and Ukrainians—were deported to Auschwitz, according to estimates cited by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death 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.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, as well as Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and people of many other nationalities, perished at the camp before it was liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945.
In 2005, the United Nations proclaimed January 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
(gs/pk)
Source: auschwitz.org, instytutpolski.pl/newyork