(see related)Acting Italian
president Pietro Grasso said Tuesday that "indifference" in the
face of horror was denounced at ceremonies marking the 70th
anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi
concentration camp.
Grasso summarized the message from the services at the
former extermination camp in Poland, saying that participants
agreed on the slogan "never again indifference".
"(We must fight against) the phenomena that divide us," he
said.
From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered
Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz from all over
German-occupied Europe.
At least 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz, 90% of
them Jewish.
Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000
Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah's
Witnesses, an undetermined number of gay people, and tens of
thousands of people of diverse nationalities.
Many of those not gassed died of starvation, forced labor,
disease, individual executions, and medical experiments.
Survivors Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote
memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, which was named a
UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.
The camp were liberated on January 27, 1945, a day now
commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
