The world has marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day amid signs that younger generations know less and less about the genocide of Jews, Roma and others by Nazi Germany during World War II.
As survivors of Auschwitz marked the 74th anniversary of the notorious death camp’s liberation, a far-right activist who served time in prison for burning an effigy of a Jew placed a wreath there with about 50 other Polish nationalists to protest the official observances.
Piotr Rybak said the group opposes the annual ceremony, claiming it glorifies the one million Jewish victims killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death complex and discounts the 70,000 Poles killed there.
“It’s time to fight against Jewry and free Poland from them!” Rybak said as he marched to the site.
Rybak’s claim is incorrect – the ceremony on Sunday at the memorial site paid homage, as it does every year, to all of the camp’s victims, both Jews and gentiles.
Former Auschwitz prisoners placed flowers at an execution wall at Auschwitz, paying homage before the arrival of the nationalists at the same spot.
Read the article in the Western Advocate.