29.01.2011

Poland Commemorates Auschwitz Liberation Anniversary

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The event was held in the presence of the EU High Representatives for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Baroness Catherine Ashton, members of the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as Holocaust survivors, ambassadors and other invited guests. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, shared a personal testimony of how a visit with his family to Auschwitz changed his life and understanding of the obligation to preserve the memory of the Shoah. In his personal quest to preserve the memory of Auschwitz he found a lifelong partner and friend in then Polish Prime Minister Buzek, who provided help and support. In his keynote speech, Buzek shared his personal experience of growing up in occupied Poland, literally in the shadow of Auschwitz, and his commitment as a Pole and as the president of the European Parliament to preserve the memory of the Nazi death camps and his role in creating an international center to educate future generations. Several speakers talked about how remembrance cannot be a ceremony of only looking back in time but rather to learn the lessons from history as they apply to today'''s situation. How many lives could have been saved if the world community had acted decisively and in time? European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor, who shared about the Evian conference of 1938 where the international community failed to open up their borders to the Jews who wanted leave Nazi-Germany and occupied Austria, asked this question. He urged listeners not to make the same mistake today when Israel is threatened with nuclear extermination. Separate ceremonies were held elsewhere in Germany, including at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where elderly survivors gathered and a new memorial in the former factory of the company that made the crematoria ovens for the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz was the most notorious of the Nazi's many death and concentration camps and the date of its liberation was chosen as International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations in 2005. Separate ceremonies were held elsewhere in Germany, including at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where elderly survivors gathered, and at a new memorial in the former factory of the company that made the crematoria ovens for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Thursday, Turkey was holding its first official commemorations on international Holocaust remembrance day.

People walk behind a red rose affixed to the main entrance on the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany during International Holocaust Remembrance Day. More than 250,000 people were held captive in the camp between 1937 and 1945, with more than 50,000 of them dying.

January 27 was chosen as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by UN's General Assembly in 2005. It is the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust which resulted in the annihilation of 6 million European Jews and millions of others by the Nazi German regime. January 27 marks the International Holocaust Remembrance day and the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp by Soviet troops in 1945. It is an annual day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi regime. It was designated by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005 during the 42nd plenary session.

The General Assembly in 2005 designated Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual day to honor the victims of the Nazi era. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington was scheduled to hold a candle-lighting ceremony in its Hall of Remembrance. The Washington diplomatic community and Holocaust survivors were among those expected to attend, according to the museum. In recognition of that day, and to remember the victims of the Holocaust, January 27 was deemed International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD) by the United Nations in 2005'''the 60th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum informs. The U.N. not only created the day to commemorate the Holocaust victims, but also made a point that every nation represented by the U.N. should create programs that will educate others to prevent any genocide of this magnitude, and any other kind, of happening again. They also declared that any denial of the Holocaust will be rejected.

January 27 is the UN designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the day in 1945 when the Nazi death camp Auschwitz was liberated. OSWIECIM, Poland - The German and Polish presidents on Thursday urged global vigilance to prevent crimes against humanity as they marked international Holocaust remembrance day at the former Auschwitz death camp. The exhibit is housed in the former administrative building of the Topf & Sons company that collaborated with Hitler's SS to design and construct special ovens to meet the demands of the death camps. It opens to the public on Thursday, the day of international Holocaust remembrance. Using original blueprints, letters from the Nazi SS, and other documents, the exhibit shows how a "normal" German company, based in the central city of Erfurt, knew and took pride in its role of designing a crucial part of the killing machinery.

A man stands in the exhibition 'The Engineers of the 'Final Solution' Topf & Sons - Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens' after a press conference in Erfurt, central Germany, on Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011. The memorial site and educational center to open this week on International Holocaust Remembrance Day documents the role played by a German maker of crematoria in the mass execution of Europe's Jews and others. Hitler's top men dreamed up the horrors of the Holocaust, but without the support of German engineers and industrialists like Topf & Sons, they would never have succeeded in murdering millions. Gathering held at Neve Salom synagogue in Istanbul; attended by members of the local Jewish community and the Turkish Foreign Ministry. Turkey held its first-ever state ceremony in memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators on Thursday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Turkey held its first official commemoration of the Holocaust on International Holocaust Remembrance Day as ''stanbul's governor and other officials joined members of Turkey's Jewish community to remember the victims of the Nazi era.

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova marks International Holocaust Commemoration Day by laying a wreath to Holocaust victims at the Paris Shoah Memorial on Wednesday. At the memorial, accompanied by her Deputy Director-General Getachew Engida (Ethiopia, center), Assistant Director General Eric Falt (France, second from left) and her diplomatic adviser Dr. Graciela Samuels (Israel, right), Bokova pledged to set a principle that '''every UNESCO Director-General visit this Shoah Memorial each 27 January.''' A native of Bulgaria, Bokova has often expressed pride at that country'''s protection of its Jewish community from deportation. The memorial'''s President, Eric de Rothschild (second from right), stressed the role of the UNESCO operational partnership in the promotion of Holocaust education and research and, since 2009, its cooperation in the organization of the International Remembrance Day events. (Memorial Director Jacques Fredj is at left.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the world on Wednesday to learn the lessons of the Holocaust and act against the Jewish state's arch-foe Iran. Speaking to parliament ahead of international Holocaust Remembrance Day, he accused the "regime of the ayatollahs" of inciting a new "genocide" against the Jewish people. Israel regards Iran as its principal threat, after repeated predictions by its hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Jewish state's demise. U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday joined a list of other world leaders in marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. "I join people here at home, in Israel, and around the world in commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we mark one of the darkest, most destructive periods in human history," he said.

In an address to Israel's Knesset marking International Holocaust Day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it is "obvious" that global anti-Semitism is "renewing and expanding." "If anyone thought that anti-Semitism stopped after World War II and the Holocaust, it is now evident that it was only a hiatus," he said, calling on the world to fight the scourge globally. "It is not only a threat against us because it always begins with the Jews but never ends with the Jews," Netanyahu said. "The hatred of Jews kindles an overall fire, and I expect that on this day, when I applaud the world for marking the most heinous crime in world history and the history of our people which was perpetrated against our people -- I hope others will also learn the lesson.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday called for building "a more peaceful, just and tolerant world" in honor of the survivors of and those who perished in the Holocaust. He described the Holocaust in the Second World War as "one of the darkest, most destructive periods in human history," in which six million Jews and millions of other people were murdered by the Nazis. Christian clerics also prayed at a gathering that included the Polish and German presidents, diplomats and Holocaust survivors. Former camp inmates, many moving tentatively with canes, wore blue-and-white striped scarves that evoked the look of the prisoner garb they once wore. Earlier, Germany's President Christian Wulff stood in silence before a gray concrete wall where Nazis executed Polish resistance members at Auschwitz, one gesture among many Thursday symbolizing his nation's remorse for the suffering inflicted during World War II. Wulff and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski laid wreaths at the wall and walked with former camp inmates beneath the entrance gate bearing the inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei" ''' or "Work Sets You Free" ''' a notorious slogan used by the Nazis in camps where they subjected their victims to slave labor, torture and murder. OSWIECIM, Poland - Germany's president said Thursday that each generation must grapple anew with the crimes of the Nazi era, as German and Polish leaders and Holocaust survivors prepared for ceremonies marking the 66th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp's liberation. German President Christian Wulff and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski joined survivors at the site of the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp in Poland today for Holocaust commemorations.

The date was picked to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of notorious death camp Auschwitz by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945. Ambassador Ertan Tezg''r, who participated in the ceremony on behalf of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, said in his speech at ''stanbul's biggest synagogue, Neve ''alom, that Turkey is following a principled approach against racism. "Turkey will follow a principled approach regarding the remembrance of the Jewish Holocaust and learn lessons from it as it fights animosity toward foreigners, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism," he was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency. He also said that Ya''ar Yak'''', chairman of the EU Harmonization Committee in Parliament and former foreign minister, will attend a ceremony on Feb. 1 in Auschwitz, Poland, on behalf of President Abdullah G''l, with Turkey's chief EU negotiator, Egemen Ba''''''. On display in the exhibit are 701 urns made by the company that were delivered to Buchenwald. The remains they contained were buried in the camp before the urns went on display. Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman at the Auschwitz state museum in Poland, said such memorials are an important part of Holocaust remembrance because they show the role played by educated and skilled people far from the death camps. "We, of course, commemorate the victims, but we must also take into consideration the group of perpetrators ''' that there were people who engaged their knowledge, their time, their education, in order to make it work," Sawicki said. Mr Weisz was speaking on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945, which Germany has marked since 1996 with official memorial ceremonies for Holocaust victims. It was the first time a Roma was the keynote speaker at the commemoration, which was also attended by chancellor Angela Merkel. Europe's Roma will be represented for the first time at Germany's official Holocaust memorial ceremony, almost seven decades after up to half a million members of the community were exterminated in Nazi death camps. Turkey annually issues messages denouncing the deaths of Jews, Gypsies and others by Nazi Germany on Holocaust remembrance day, but Thursday's ceremony marks the first official Holocaust memorial in predominantly Muslim Turkey. Zoni Weisz spoke on Thursday during the commemoration of Nazi victims in front of the Bundestag. The first Roma guest of honor Germany's official Holocaust remembrance day ceremony has stated his people now face new threats. BERLIN (Reuters) - The first Sinti and Roma keynote speaker at Germany's Holocaust remembrance day told parliament on Thursday the mass murder of Roma during the Nazi era was the "forgotten Holocaust" as they continue to suffer across Europe. Zoni Weisz, 73, was only seven years old when he was separated from his family and fled the German transports from the Netherlands to Auschwitz. He was saved by the grace of a policeman and spent the war in hiding. His parents and siblings were murdered in Auschwitz.

Now called the'' Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, it looks much as it did during the war years, where more than one million Jews were cycled through and murdered. On this anniversary,'' World Holocaust Remembrance Day, the''Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation is kicking off " Intervene Now!," a campaign to unite the world in protecting and preserving Auschwitz to honor the memory of those who died there.

While January 27 is recognized by many countries as a day of remembrance for the Holocaust victims, other dates are used across the world to honor them, including Israel, which holds commemorating ceremonies in April. Bulgaria marks its Holocaust Remembrance Day on March 10, a day dedicated to the rescue of approximately 50 000 Bulgarian Jews 65 years ago.

On international Holocaust Remembrance Day we commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. This date is less than three years before the international community overwhelmingly endorsed the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty, through UN General Assembly Resolution 181, in our ancient homeland. International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked around the world on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Soviet army in 1945. The international Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 marks the day Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1945. Thursday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day as designated by the UN in November 2005. This day was chosen because it is the date on which the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated by the Red Army.

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation Council and a former prisoner at the camp, said the camp needed to be preserved as a permanent reminder to future generations. "The barracks, the barbed wire, and the ruins of the crematoria and gas chambers are the best guardian of memory; through their silent presence they ensure that nobody can ever deny that the worst of the 20th century?s crimes actually occurred," he said. "By ensuring the preservation of the. site and maintaining the testimonies of the past, we are, in fact, taking care of the future," he added in comments published on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As Elie Wiesel put it, '''Cold-blooded murder and culture did not exclude each other. If the Holocaust proved anything, it is that a person can both love poems and kill children'''. In acting upon the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, states should commit themselves to implementing the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, which concluded: '''We share a commitment to encourage the study of the Holocaust in all its dimensions''' a commitment to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and to honor those who stood against it''' a commitment to throw light on the still obscured shadows of the Holocaust''' a commitment to plant the seeds of a better future amidst the soil of a bitter past''' a commitment''' to remember the victims who perished, respect the survivors still with us, and reaffirm humanity'''s common aspiration for mutual understanding and justice.''' MONTREAL - A ceremony to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day was held in Montreal on Thursday evening, and the enduring message from the survivors and others in attendance is just how easy it is to forget the horrors of the past. The ceremony at Auschwitz is one of several being held across the world on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the global day of commemoration established by the United Nations in 2005.

Today marks the sixty-sixth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, with commemorations across the globe in observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Sixty-six years ago Auschwitz stopped functioning. This is commemorated around the world as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rivlin lashed out at the world for not taking action against Iran. '''Six years after the world established International Holocaust Remembrance Day and vowed to remember ''' the serpent of destruction again raises its head,''' he said. '''It turns out that in complete contrast to the hopes of the Zionist movement, an old anti-Semitism is emerging again,''' he continued. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked for the fifth year running.

The European Parliament honored the victims of the Holocaust this week with the annual International Holocaust Remembrance day event on Tuesday night in Brussels.

President of the German Constitutional Court Andreas Vosskuhle (R-L) German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President of the Bundesstag Norbert Lammert, Zoni Weisz representative of German head of the central council of the Sinti and Roma and President of the Upper House of Parliament Bundesrat Hannelore Kraft attend a commemoration service for the victims of national socialism, on International Holocaust Memorial Day, at the Reichstag building, seat of the German lower house of Parliament Bundestag, in Berlin, January 27, 2011. Germany is marking Holocaust memorial day, 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. This year, Europe's Roma are being represented for the first time. Nazi Germany opened Auschwitz as a concentration camp in the summer of 1940 after it invaded and occupied Poland, and its first prisoners were Poles. Because of its location in the heart of Europe, Germany soon turned it into a center for implementing the "Final Solution," the plan to kill Europe's Jews. By the time of its liberation, at least 1.1 million people had died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau or from starvation, disease and forced labor. WARSAW - Trustees at the Auschwitz museum marked the 66th anniversary of its liberation Thursday by launching a Facebook drive to help raise 120 million euros to preserve the site of the Nazi death camp. In a message on its Facebook page, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation said it hoped to draw 120 million euros ($164mn) donations from "individuals, organisations and governments around the world" to protect the site in Poland where an estimated 1.1 people were slaughtered during World War II. A handful of elderly camp survivors and young Germans and Poles also gathered in Oswiecim, southern Poland, for ceremonies marking 66 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex where German Nazis killed more than a million people during World War II.

Survivors of the German Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau attend ceremonies at the camp in Poland on Thursday to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the camp's liberation. Warsaw - Poland's and Germany's presidents were set Thursday to mark the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz with ceremonies in southern Poland.

Dutch born Zoni Weisz, a Roma Holocaust survivor, will address Germany's Bundestag on Thursday, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. During the ceremony held in the Bundestag, Dutch born Zoni Weisz, a Roma Holocaust survivor, addressed the parliamentary chamber. The son of a music shop owner, Mr Weisz was just seven when his family were deported from the Netherlands to Auschwitz. He escaped the Nazi raid in his hometown with the help of a policeman, but his parents, sisters and younger brother were all murdered at the death camp. Berlin - A gypsy survivor of the Holocaust recalled as guest speaker in the German parliament Thursday how his parents and siblings were dragged away by the Nazis in the Netherlands and taken to the Auschwitz death camp to be killed.

In Berlin, the German parliament convened Thursday for a special session commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. Parliamentary President Norbert Lammert reminded lawmakers it is the duty of later generations to keep alive the memory of those murdered by the Nazis. For the first time, a survivor representing Sinti and Roma, or Gypsies, addressed the body, reminding lawmakers of what he called the "forgotten Holocaust" against 500,000 of his people. For the first time, a survivor representing Gypsies addressed the body. Zoni Weisz reminded lawmakers of what he called the "forgotten Holocaust" against 500,000 of his people. Romani Rose, chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, also recalled the suffering of his people during the events at Auschwitz, noting that "practically every family from our minority has been affected by the Holocaust." He also warned that right-wing hatred is again killing Roma, today Europe's largest ethnic minority, noting that 11 Hungarian Roma have been killed since 2008 by neo-Nazis in "a new dimension of violence against our minority."

Tears welled up in the eyes of many parliamentarians as Zoni Weisz, 73, spoke on Holocaust Day of the family's 'deportation' in May 1944 and deaths, and his own escape thanks to a friendly Dutch policeman. He survived the rest of the Second World War in hiding. He was the first gypsy to give the keynote address after many years where Jewish survivors took the role at the Berlin ceremony. 'The genocide of the Sinti and Roma remains a forgotten Holocaust to this day,' he said. The day aims to remind the world not only of the events leading up to and during World War II, but of subsequent genocides too. This year, the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day was Untold Stories. A national event will take place in London later today, bringing together survivors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, as well as politicians, young people, religious leaders and dignitaries. The theme of this year's HMD is "untold stories" inspired by the fact that there are millions of stories which will never be told because lives and communities were wiped out in genocide. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust hopes that by listening to the stories that have been told, people will better understand those untold stories, using the lessons learnt as an inspiration. The victims and survivors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides are being remembered at hundreds of events across the UK today as part of Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) 2011.

A Lincolnshire arts venue is commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day 2011 with a series of talks and readings. On Wednesday Holocaust survivor Hanneke Dye shared her account of the Holocaust with local school children. She told them what it was like being brought up in Nazi occupied Holland as a Jewish child.

A decade ago 27 January was designated Holocaust Memorial Day. This date was chosen because on 27 January 1945 Soviet soldiers liberated the first Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. More recent genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur are also remembered on this date. The anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on 27 January 1945 is been marked by Holocaust Memorial Day. Holocaust Memorial Day is an annual event and takes place on the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau - the largest Nazi Concentration Camp.

People gathered at the Holocaust Memorial Centre on Cote Ste-Catherine to share stories and listen to readings of letters sent home to Canada from World War II. One of those letters was written on April 30, 1945 by a Jewish Canadian soldier named Saul Stein, telling stories of what he witnessed as the Allied forces made their way across Germany liberating concentration camps. The largest concentration camp was Auschwitz, located in Poland, where more than one million people were killed. According to www.holocaustforgotten.com, an estimated 11 million men, women, and children were killed during the Holocaust, six million of them being Jewish. Last year, a record 1.4 million people came from around the world. To the delight of officials, most of them were young people and students. Kastelaniec explained that he often sees groups of young people as they begin their tours. Sometimes they're making jokes. "But after three hours of visiting, many of them are very, very reflective," he says. "It's a very strong experience." As the numbers of Auschwitz survivors dwindle, there's more need than ever to preserve the space that haunted them. "This generation is passing away," Kastelaniec says. Noah Flug is one such witness. Now 86, he was in the concentration camp at the age of 19. From his home in Israel, he told Tonic proudly, "I was a prisoner in''Auschwitz''and I am now president of the International Auschwitz Committee."

Gogol stood in that fearful place and played ''' Hatikva.''' It was not only his anthem but his song of triumph over the Nazis. He died only a few weeks later. A graphic artist and animator, poet, author and playwright, Bau for many years used his talents to tell his story. Part of his story was also told in Steven Spielberg'''s Academy Award winning film Schindler'''s List. It was at the Plaszow concentration camp that Bau met and secretly married Rebecca Tennenbaum. Their marriage was featured in the film. Bau was subsequently transferred to the Gross Rosen concentration camp and from there to Oskar Schindler'''s camp, where he stayed till the end of the war. Rebecca was sent to Auschwitz, where three times she managed to evade the gas chambers. After the war, the two were reunited and in 1950 they came here with an infant daughter. Another daughter was born to them. After Bau died in 2002, his daughters Cilla and Hadassa turned his apartment at 9 Rehov Berdichevski, Tel Aviv, into a museum. "Only two survived." Fishman and his family lived in Hungary and were taken by the Nazis in 1944 when he was 17. They were sent to Auschwitz, where the notorious Dr. Joseph Mengele selected who would live and who would die. "My father and my little kid brother, I didn't even have a chance to say hello, say goodbye to them or something," he said. While most of his family was murdered, Fishman spent the next year in slave labour. "I grew up practically in the concentration camp and the slave labour camp where we were beaten if we stopped for a couple of minutes for rest," he recalled. He was later moved to the Bergen-Belsen camp where he was liberated at the war's end. Fishman says his recollections are vivid. Memories of events during childhood, he says, are usually the strongest.

Topf & Sons first began supplying Hitler's SS with corpse incineration ovens in 1939 for use in the Buchenwald, Flossenbuerg and Dachau concentration camps. Two years later, they applied for a patent for a "continuous-operation corpse incineration oven for mass use," knowing the Nazis would use the ovens to dispose of corpses of Jews, Gypsies and others murdered en masse in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Once inside, pictures of the Nazi-era production site, the company's logo and other artifacts greet visitors as they make their way to the exhibit, where blueprints showing the proportions of pipes and bricks of an oven are displayed in an otherwise bare room. Hitler could not be appeased.''' The Holocaust was preceded by harsh policies against the Jews, including their relegation to ghettoes and restrictions on their freedoms and rights. The Nazis began rounding up the Jews in late 1941, and then sending them to concentration camps, which were nearly all located in German-occupied Poland.

Adolf Hitler himself was explicit enough to call the Arabs "painted half-apes, who want to feel the whip." (Quotes are from Bernard Lewis, "Semites & Anti-Semites.") Perhaps Mr. Ahmadinejad of Iran might wish to consider such facts about the Nazis, before hosting a Holocaust-denial conference next time - a denial which whitewashes the crimes of one of the most evil cadre in human history. At the end of the day, no matter how much we protest the Israeli government for its decades-long policies of occupation and intimidation that has wronged the Palestinian people, we have to acknowledge the tragedy of the Holocaust. Its victims were innocent people who had no crime other than being Jews. And, in the face of such genocidal racism, we should all stand by the Jews. The fact that Israel often uses the Holocaust to shield itself against all criticism, including the most legitimate ones, has created a temptation to overlook or sometimes even deny the Holocaust. That is all too wrong. Quite the contrary, if Muslim societies want to have a higher moral ground on the Palestinian cause, they should in fact begin by being fair to the Jewish people, which should begin by respecting the victims in their history. Another disturbing fact within some Islamic circles - the radical or bigoted ones, of course - is a sort of sympathy for the Nazis since they "gave a lesson to the Jews." This is not only terribly immoral. It is also fully stupid and ignorant. The international community had, through the Mandate for Palestine in 1922, recognized the '''historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine''' in order to reconstitute '''their national home.''' While there is little basis for arguing that the Jewish people'''s right to sovereignty in its historic homeland is based solely on the Holocaust, there is a clear basis for the assertion that the Holocaust would not have happened were Jewish sovereignty already existent at the time. Israel'''s Declaration of Independence recalls the Holocaust as '''another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by reestablishing in Eretz Yisrael the Jewish state, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew, and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.''' People will often hold on tighter to a misconception when presented with facts. As an American Jew, I see that most American Jews refuse to acknowledge that the country that they believe is their homeland is oppressing and abusing the human rights of Palestinians, even when they are shown irrefutable evidence, and even when they see the situation with their own eyes. Safety Many American Jews feel that Israel's existence as a Jewish state gives them the security that when the next Holocaust comes, they will have a refuge. On this topic, Meyer says the Holocaust is being manipulated. The Israeli government "manipulate the Holocaust for their political aims. In the long-run the country is destructing itself this way by inducing their Jewish citizens to become paranoid," he said in a 2009 interview with Electronic Intifada. It is not only the Jewish Israelis who become paranoid. Perhaps Dr. Meyer will shed some light on this puzzle when he speaks February 8 at 7:00 pm in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall at Macalester College on the topic "Never Again for Anyone." Hajo Meyer, after being interned for about the same amount of time in Auschwitz, and becoming a physicist, a violinist, and author, speaks out against the ethnic-based laws, arbitrary arrests and torture, confiscation of land, home demolitions, and denials of human rights, which are occurring at an ever increasing pace in Israel and the Occupied Territories. He finds similarities between the repressive regime that Israel has become and the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, before the Final Solution, when Nazis wanted just to "transfer" the Jews out of the Reich. For a man in his 80s, he works tirelessly, writing and speaking against the misuse of the Holocaust as a justification for the oppression of the Palestinians. For Dr. Meyer, the core value of Judaism is "the equality of relationships among human beings," a value that is being violated by Israel's treatment of Palestinians, hence the name of his book, The End of Judaism: an Ethnical Tradition Betrayed. American Media American media disappoints in their coverage of the Palestine/Israel issue. Marda Dunsky wrote an excellent study of the coverage in her Pens and Swords (2007), in which she analyzes some of the reasons that the American press is heavily biased in favor of Israel.

Israel's official memorial to the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, at Auschwitz and elsewhere, is a 180,000 m2 complex called Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem.

In many countries, it has become Holocaust Memorial Day. On a day which recalls absolute evil, it is natural to ask questions such as: Will Iran succeed in making an atom bomb and if so, when will it become operational? In light of the many years of threats by its leaders, will Iran use it against Israel? These seem to be the most realistic aspects of a far more diverse discussion of whether once again, there can or will happen a '''genocide of Jews''' (which is a more adequate expression than '''Holocaust.''') The Holocaust Memorial Day service at midday marked 66 years since the camp in Poland was liberated. Each year since 2001, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau has been marked by Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January. January 27, the anniversary of the Red Army's liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, is marked as Holocaust Day internationally. Topf und Soehne went out of business years ago and only its office building is left. It has been refurbished as an information centre to teach schoolchildren and tourists about the Holocaust. The UN General Assembly adopted resolution No. 61/255 'Denial of Holocaust' on January 26, 2007, denouncing the denial of the Holocaust as a historic fact and proclaimed to mark annually January 27 as the day of liberation of the Auschwitz (Oswiencim) concentration camp. The Holocaust commemoration is held on January 27, the day Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz death camp in 1945. According to a UN decision, the commemoration date was timed to coincide with the day of liberation by the Soviet Army of Auschwitz, one of the most dreadful Nazi death camps.

As darkness fell, names of Hitler's victims were read out over loudspeakers in a recitation that seemed long but ultimately included but a fraction of the 1.1 million Jews, Gypsies and others murdered at Nazi Germany's most notorious death camp. The day commemorates the death of six million people, mostly Jews, by Nazi Germany during World War II. The Nazi regime killed some 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, at Auschwitz during Germany's World War II occupation of Poland. During World War II, Nazi Germany killed an estimated 1.1 million people at the camp complex it set up in the small town of Oswiecim in occupied Poland.

Political prisoners, Poles, gays and lesbians, Jehovah's Witnesses and Soviet prisoners of war were also killed en masse by the Nazis, along with nearly 6 million Jews. "To label people as unworthy and order their destruction and, finally, to systematically murder millions in an industrialized fashion ''' that is unique in human history," Lammert said. "The memory of those events and aberrations obliges us to respect all people equally. and to confront violations of human rights in Germany and everywhere else in the world." "The Nazi Holocaust was a very dark chapter in human history and the Memorial has a duty of telling the story of an unthinkable event," said Sharon Horowitz, the Memorial's executive director. "We want people to remember the survivors and their testimonies that show their valor, their survival, their rescue, their resistance, and just simple acts of kindness which I think are amazing examples on how to live our lives." The series is sponsored by Naomi Wilzig in memory of her husband, Holocaust survivor Siggi. It begins with the presentation, "Laughter As Resistance: Performance During the Holocaust" at 4:15 p.m. on Jan. 31 at the University of Miami's Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies Auditorium, 105 Merrick Building, 5202 University Drive in Coral Gables. On Feb. 1, Miriam Klein Kassenoff, Ed.D, a co-chair for the Memorial's Education Committee, will moderate a panel discussion of three Holocaust survivors, "Survivor Testimony Through Literature," beginning at 11:15 a.m. at Miami-Dade College's Homestead Campus, 500 College Terrace, Building F, Room 222. The survivors will share their books about their experiences during the Nazi years. Joe Sachs, a Sunny Isles Beach resident who will participate in the panel, said, "To bring the pained history of mankind into focus is to help prevent a repeat of such a tragedy as the Holocaust."

Holocaust survivors, school children, and faith and civic leaders will all be marking Holocaust Memorial Day 2011 with events in Cambridgeshire. The powerful readings serve as a blunt reminder of the kind of suffering previous generations endured, and it underlies the importance of having a place like the Holocaust Memorial Centre, said board president Susyn Borer. "It's so easy to forget," she said. "It's so easy if you don't have a place that physically reminds you, that has the stories there where people can go to look and learn and go back." For people like Joseph Fishman, events like this are important to help other people remember - because the events he lived through while living at the infamous Auschwitz camp are impossible to forget. Schools of Moscow and other cities will again hold 'a lesson of tolerance', timed to coincide with the liberation of the Auschwitz camp. Schoolchildren will view this year the 40-minute film 'Dreadful lesson of history' ' a narrative of president of the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC) Yuri Kanner about the Holocaust. Whenever I write on the Holocaust ''' the Shoah ''' I do so with a certain degree of humility, and not without a deep sense of pain. For I am reminded of what my parents taught me while still a young boy ''' the profundity and pain of which I realized only years later ''' that there are things in Jewish history that are too terrible to be believed, but not too terrible to have happened; that Oswiencim, Majdanek, Dachau, Treblinka ''' these are beyond vocabulary. Words may ease the pain, but they may also dwarf the tragedy. For the Holocaust was uniquely evil in its genocidal singularity, where biology was inescapably destiny, a war against the Jews in which, as Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel put it, '''not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.''' I am! Did you know that in 1938, the famous Jewish author and Nobel Prize winner, Gertrude Stein, led the campaign that got Adolf Hitler nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? People forget that in the '30s and '40s many Orthodox Rabbis liked Hitler. They shared the same moral beliefs and traditional values. I will never never forget what my grandfather repeatedly said on his dying bed last year "If only the Jews were united the holocaust would never have happened".

Sixty-six years ago, the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau were finally opened to set the poor wretched remainder of European Jewry free after years of unspeakable horror. Much of the world had turned its back on the Jews of Europe during those darkest of days, and even later refused to let this remnant return to its ancestral home. A sovereign Jewish state would have immediately travelled to the ends of the earth to rescue and fight for its people.

There will be various commemorations here; the most important will be a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Eichmann trial in the very building in Jerusalem in which it was held. There is much to remind us of the Holocaust, but there is also much that is fading as Holocaust survivors die out and take with them the traditions of European Jewish communities. Among those who are trying to preserve something of those traditions is Chilik Frank, a hassidic musician who has a klezmer band and is widely recognized as a leading clarinetist. His repertoire and his many CDs include melodies of all the old hassidic courts. He is currently working to revive the songs sung by Jews during the Holocaust. Among these is the melody most commonly sung today to '''Ani Ma'''amin''' (I believe), composed on the train en route to Treblinka by Rabbi Azriel David Fastag, a Modzitz hassid. A talented young musician, Gogol was chosen to play in the Auschwitz orchestra. In 1993, when Yitzhak Rabin went to Poland for the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, he was accompanied by a large delegation of Holocaust survivors that included Gogol. Rabin had a special reason for taking Gogol with him. He wanted him to play the harmonica in Auschwitz again ''' but this time not as a persecuted Polish Jew, but as a proud Israeli.

"And we resolve to stand up against prejudice, stereotyping and violence -- including the scourge of anti-Semitism, around the globe." He paid tribute to those who "courageously and heroically expressed the very best of the human capacity for compassion and justice by risking their lives to save their fellow human beings during the Holocaust," adding they demonstrated that "in the midst of evil, human beings can perform remarkable acts of decency and dignity." "Finally, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember the survivors and the profound faith and courage they have embodied to build lives of purpose and meaning," Obama said. "In doing so, they are defying those who tried to kill them, and teaching us that love and life can vanquish hate and death." Launched on World Holocaust Remembrance Day, the "Intervene Now!" campaign aims to protect the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Students pass a red rose at the Gleis 17 (Track 17) memorial at the train station Grunewald on the international Holocaust remembrance day in Berlin, Germany, on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011. The world is remembering the Holocaust, but it is not doing enough to condemn Iran and its anti-Semitism, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, at a Knesset session marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that will be observed on Thursday. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday paid special tribute to the women who suffered in the Holocaust in a statement released in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. "Mothers and daughters, grandmothers, sisters and aunts, they saw their lives irrevocably changed, their families separated and their traditions shattered. Despite appalling acts of discrimination, deprivation and cruelty, they consistently found ways to fight back against their persecutors," Ban stated. "They joined the resistance, rescued those in peril, smuggled food into ghettos and made wrenching sacrifices to keep their children alive. Their courage continues to inspire. On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us honor these women and their legacy. Let us pledge to create a world where such atrocities can never be repeated," he added. There is good reason why International Holocaust Remembrance Day must focus on the Shoah itself. It is only by continuing efforts to fathom this tragic chapter in history that we can hope to derive enough wisdom to prevent similar tragedies from unfolding before our eyes. We remember ''' and we trust ''' that never again will we be silent or indifferent in the face of evil. May this International Day of Holocaust Remembrance be not only an act of remembrance, but a remembrance to act.

Jan. 27, the world will pause to remember the more than six million lives lost in the Holocaust. Jan. 27 is International Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, designated as such by the United Nations in 2005. The commemoration will be observed at the United Nations headquarters in New York and at its offices worldwide. The Holocaust Remembrance day in the European Parliament was launched by the ECI in 2005, the same year as the United Nations declared the 27th January as an official day for Holocaust commemoration. Israel'''s own Holocaust Remembrance Day is on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, which generally falls in April. That date was chosen because it is close to the anniversary of 1943'''s Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Commemoration events, devoted to the Holocaust Remembrance Day, will be also held in Bryansk, Voronezh, Samara and many other Russian cities.

Thursday'''s gathering, which was held at the Neve Salom Synagogue in Istanbul, was attended by members of the Jewish community and the Turkish Foreign Ministry. '''It is humanity'''s obligation to condemn the Holocaust, which aimed to completely destroy a people, to take necessary measures to prevent future genocides and to encourage efforts to educate new generations,''' the Jewish community said in a statement. How much have we learned from the past? Out of the horrors of Armenia and the Nazi Holocaust, a word was created to give the ultimate crime a name. It was created to invoke immediate condemnation, to drive people to act, and to establish genocide as an international crime, which signatory nations would undertake to prevent and punish. It was the hope that the global community would stand together to confront hatred, intolerance, and crimes against humanity. The Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission Act created an 18-member commission to increase public awareness of the Nazi Holocaust and other genocides through educational programs, public commemorations, and community outreach. The commission represents the latest milestone in our state'''s visionary approach to this subject, which began in 1990 with passage of the landmark Holocaust Education Act. That legislation was the first of its kind in the nation, mandating the teaching of the Holocaust in public schools.

The memorial joins the Holocaust Monument in the heart of Berlin and preserved concentration camps all over the country as visible reminders of the genocide that continued till the Nazis' defeat. Berlin will also unveil a memorial street named after a book banned by the Nazis that told the love story of a German boy and a Roma girl called "Ede and Unku." A school will also be named in the city after boxer Johann Trollmann, a Sinti boxing champion who had his title denied him by the Nazis in 1933 and was later murdered in a concentration camp near Hamburg.

In the case of Elie Wiesel, the paragon of human rights champion, who protested against South African Apartheid, delivered food to starving Cambodians, and said that although the world knew what was happening in the Nazi concentration camps people did nothing. "That is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation." When it comes to Palestinians he can't quite see their suffering and humiliation. He has encouraged silence about Israel's treatment of Palestinians. He repeats the denial myths about the origins of the Palestinian refugees and the ongoing ethnic cleansing, and he claims that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is "humane," despite abundant evidence of the opposite. From 1933 until 1938 a vast majority of the prisoners in the concentration camps were people that had spoken or acted in some way against Hitler or the Nazis.

On Nov. 9, 1938, the Nazis destroyed Jewish homes and businesses, rounding up thousands of Jews to be taken to concentration camps.

Istanbul's governor and other officials were to join members of Turkey's Jewish community to remember the victims of Nazi death camps. Poland's president Bronislaw Komorowski (3R) and Germany's president Christian Wulff (4R) with their delegations jointly pass the main gate of the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, January 27 2011. Disabled people and political and religious dissidents were also among the groups systematically killed. Germany meanwhile added to its dozens of monuments and museums marking the years of persecution with a new museum in the eastern city of Erfurt in an office building where the Auschwitz death camp crematorium was designed by a private contractor. In 2005, Turkish President Abdullah G''l attended a ceremony in Auschwitz to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp. The Dutch-born speaker is the sole survivor of a family killed in 1944. He was speaking on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops in 1945.

Rabbis chanted mournful prayers for the dead that reverberated over the crematoria, barracks and watchtowers of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Thursday, the 66th anniversary of the death camp's liberation.

Trustees at the Auschwitz museum also marked the liberation anniversary Thursday by launching a Facebook drive to help raise 120 million euros ($164m) to preserve the site of the camp for posterity. The date was picked to coincide with the anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world body was paying special tribute this year to the women who suffered in the Holocaust. "They joined the resistance, rescued those in peril, smuggled food into ghettos and made wrenching sacrifices to keep their children alive," he said. "Their courage continues to inspire." "A half-million Sinti and Roma -- men, women and children -- were exterminated in the Holocaust," Weisz told the Bundestag on the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz, with Chancellor Angela Merkel standing just a few steps away.

In Berlin, the German parliament convened for a special session commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. For the first time, a Roma man addressed the body, reminding lawmakers of what he called the "forgotten Holocaust" of hundreds of thousands of his own people. The majority of Holocaust victims were Jewish but historians estimate between 220,000 and 500,000 Roma also died. West Germany did not formally acknowledge this different genocide until 1982, the BBCs Stephen Evans reports from Berlin. "The fates of Erna Lauenburger and Johann Trollmann represent the fate of half a million Sinti and Roma victims of the genocide. There has not been enough discussion of these crimes," said local councillor Jan Stoess. Germany is to inaugurate a memorial to Sinti and Roma murdered by the Nazis near the Reichstag later this year. In Germany, where the government goes to great lengths to commemorate victims of the Nazi era, the genocide of the Roma was only first acknowledged in 1982. After nearly two decades of planning, a memorial to Sinti and Roma will be unveiled in Berlin this year, among other memorials.

Over sixty-five years have passed since the end of World War II and the atrocities of the Nazi Holocaust. It is difficult to imagine the horrors endured by the victims, or the eternal scars carried by its survivors. In many ways the crimes committed upon them are imprinted upon us all. "We emphasize that the Holocaust cannot be consigned to the past and forgotten and, by drawing lessons for the human race from one of the gravest crimes against humanity in history, we remember the importance of working together to create a better future and a peaceful world," read the statement. "On this occasion, we also respectfully remember our diplomats who did not hesitate to risk their lives to protect and save people targeted by the Nazi regime during World War II and who thereby make us proud of our history." To some it has simply become a catch-all-day for marking man'''s inhumanity to man. Although we certainly need to be aware of the crimes that people have committed against their fellows throughout history, there are certain facets of the Holocaust that make it stand out; it behooves us to study it, teach it and commemorate it on its own merits. Perhaps the most salient point is not the number of Jews killed, nor how they were killed, nor who killed them, but why they were killed. Nazi ideology held that the Jews ''' both individually and collectively ''' are evil from birth, the root of all problems, and a threat to the rest of mankind by their very physical presence. A policy of murdering all Jews everywhere coalesced because the group who planned, facilitated and led the murder genuinely believed it was essential for the success of their plan to restructure the world along Nazi racist lines. As their vision of a world run according to Nazi racist doctrine crumbled, they clung to the conviction that at least by murdering all the Jews they would achieve something glorious. Another singular dimension rests precisely in the fact that the group targeted for annihilation was the Jews.

The threats and hate from the arab world might not lead to another holocaust but it will lead to more wars. Anti-zionism and antisemitism forces are working all over the globe, while there aren't that many of them they do spread their message in sophisticated ways, and Israel does almost nothing to counter it. Wiser and more educated people than me have said it before : Arab are born into a society where its normal and encouraged to dislike Jews, holocaust is denied and Israel is described as criminal state. There is a Jewish dictum, '''Kol Yisrael arevim zeh l'''zeh''' (all Jews are responsible for each other), that is important to note. While we are proud that Jews in the Diaspora feel a responsibility to Israel, they should be more greatly assured that the State of Israel feels an equally immense responsibility to Jewish people all across the globe. With the current assault on Israel'''s legitimacy growing, the Jewish people as a whole are being targeted. It is increasingly easy to demonstrate that the '''new''' anti-Semitism, remodeled as anti-Zionism, is on many occasions a thinly veiled disguise for '''old''' anti-Semitism. Those who deny only the Jewish people, out of all the family of nations, the right to selfdetermination single us out. Unfortunately, among these groups and individuals can also be found many Jews. This is hardly unique in a history which has repeatedly shown many Jews being party to their own destruction. Yuli Edelstein, Israeli Minister for Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, spoke about how the modern state of Israel today faces the same prejudice and hatred as the Jewish people have experienced throughout history. He said, today people like to hide behind the false facade of anti-Zionism and not admit if they are anti-Semitic. European Coalition for Israel was represented by Tomas Sandell, who reminded the audience about an EU emergency summit in 2004 when Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel expressed his disappointment on how only the Jewish communities reacted against the rise of anti-Semitism. In his speech, Sandell reassured the meeting that the Jewish people are not alone but that many Christians stand by their side in '''a coalition of all the others.''' Kantor was one of many speakers to remind the audience about how the modern state of Israel is the best guarantee for a safe haven for World Jewry. How many lives could have been saved if a Jewish state would have been established already in 1938? Chief Rabbi of Israel Meir Lau asked this question, reminding the audience of the failures of the world community to intervene in time for the Jewish people who perished in Europe.

Sami Herman, the head of Turkey's Jewish People's Community, said that the Holocaust is a black stain on all of humanity and all people should work to avoid experiencing anything like it in the future. The 2,000 years of Diaspora left the Jewish people vulnerable to all manner of expulsions, massacres, pogroms and discrimination, culminating in the attempted genocide that was the Holocaust.

Carly Whyborn, chief executive officer at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, added: "Last year on HMD, thousands of people came together and pledged to become part of a Legacy of Hope. "This year, our theme, Untold Stories takes this one step further and provides everyone with an opportunity to make this pledge a reality. "On HMD 2011, we want people to think about those in our communities today whose stories are untold and who may be marginalised by society. The Counterfeiters, a film based on the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch who was forced to help the Germans create counterfeit money, will be screened at 8.30pm. Those interested in attending must email social_action_office@cujs.org for more details. • Royston Library has a display explaining Holocaust Memorial Day and is also picking up on this year's theme, Untold Stories.

Holocaust Memorial Day: 'Forgotten Holocaust' of Roma finally acknowledged in Germany - Telegraph We no longer check to see whether Telegraph.co.uk displays properly in Internet Explorer version 6 or earlier. • Cambridge University Jewish Club is hosting a Holocaust Memorial Day film night. Director-General Irina Bokova pledges "every UNESCO Director-General will visit this memorial" on International Holocaust Memorial Day. • An exhibition displaying poems and art work created by pupils from St John Fisher and Jack Hunt schools to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day will be held at Peterborough Town Hall, from 1.30pm to 4pm. • Six schools in Peterborough have combined forces to perform pieces around the theme of Untold Stories. It's at the Key Theatre in Peterborough at 7.30pm and tickets cost £6. • Patrick Brandon, musician and pastor at the Olive Tree in Ely, will perform material from his jazz oratorio, The Shoah to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day.

Germany marks the day with official memorial ceremonies for Holocaust victims. "We are reminded to remain ever-vigilant against the possibility of genocide, and to ensure that 'Never Again'is not just a phrase but a principled cause," the president said in a statement marking the United Nations' annual International Day of Commemoration to honor the Holocaust victims. At the United Nations in New York, representatives will mark the occasion with a ceremony at the General Assembly. This year the international organization has chosen to highlight the plight of female victims with an exhibit called '''Women and the Holocaust: Courage and Compassion.'''

Untold Stories is the theme of Cambridge City Council's civic ceremony. It will include testimonies from survivors, excerpts from a new play about Nicholas Winton (a Briton who rescued over 600 Jewish children from German-occupied Prague), and a previously untold story by Holocaust survivor Eva Clarke. It's at the Guildhall in Cambridge at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Dutch-born Holocaust survivor Zoni Weisz, 73, said discrimination and exclusion of Roma in some Western European countries showed that Europe had still failed to learn crucial lessons from the Nazi era. German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C) shakes hands with Dutch-born Roma Holocaust survivor Zoni Weisz (L) after his speech at the Bundestag on January 27 2011. Bulgaria, Romania, Italy and France are discriminating their Roma minorities, according to Dutch gypsy and Holocaust survivor Zoni Weisz.

Though January 27th is the official date, in churches and faith communities across Europe the day will be commemorated on Sunday the 30th of January with a special appeal to help Holocaust survivors in Israel. Holocaust survivor Iby Knill, who will be attending a HMD event in Halifax, West Yorkshire, said: "My wish is that people respect one another and realise human life is the most valuable thing in the whole world. "By understanding this we can all live in a peaceful and happy society."

First of all Iran or Iranians do not deny the "holocaust" or are anti-semitic. What President Ahmadinejad said was he wanted to have historians to look into the history and research the events of that era and see it's relation to the creation of Israel. That is not denying "holocaust". Those who oppose his idea are certainly anti-science and academic research. The largest Jewish population in the area aside from Israel are living in Iran, they have lived there for centuries. The website also reports that IHRD will be observed in Tehran for the first time. This is surprising since Iran'''s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has publicly denied that the Holocaust ever happened. The United States also holds its own special time of remembrance for the Holocaust.

Recently, a conversation between American President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger from 1973 was published. It was revealed that both men did not consider it of any importance for the United States if Jews in the Soviet Union were to be sent to gas chambers. Kissinger has recently apologized for this statement. At the beginning of this century, the outburst of new anti-Semitism ''' often cloaked as anti-Israelism - led to a revival of this discussion. In 2002, American columnist Ron Rosenbaum wrote that author Philip Roth had coined the term '''The Second Holocaust''' in his novel '''Operation Shylock''' written in 1993. The toast was made with Israeli wine. For Smutny the event was particularly emotional, because ever since his own chamber was established 15 years ago, he had been dreaming of a sister chamber in Israel ''' and at last the dream had come true. Both Schwarzenberg and the new chamber'''s honorary president Dan Propper spoke of the long and warm relationship the country has had with Czech leaders and the Czech people since long before the establishment of the state. Propper recalled that it had been the Czechs who supplied arms during the War of Independence, and Schwarzenberg noted the friendship demonstrated by Czech president Tomas Masaryk toward the Jewish people and the Zionist enterprise. As for the new venture, he saw it as a bridge that would enable the expansion of both economic and cultural relations. JTA is the definitive, trusted global source of breaking news, investigative reporting, in-depth analysis, opinion and features on current events and issues of interest to the Jewish people.

JTA is driven by the belief that knowledge is power, and that only by being better informed can the Jewish community be better connected. Readers can access JTA reporting directly through a number of products in addition to this highly-trafficked Web site. JTA also serves as an international news, feature and photo service for over 100 Jewish publications and Web sites worldwide that depend on JTA for Jewish news outside of their local community. Throughout its 90-year history, JTA has earned its reputation for journalistic integrity, outstanding reporting and insightful analysis. One of the speakers, a member of the Turkish Jewish community, reminded everyone of the uniqueness of the Holocaust in the history of evil. She was right.

Going further, the declaration recalls the Jewish community of Mandatory Palestine'''s assistance in the struggle against the Nazis. This demonstrates an early pre-state commitment to rally in the service of any Jew who is in danger. That commitment has continued unabated. Apart from opening the doors and welcoming Jewish communities across the globe regardless of their circumstance, many ''' like those in the Arab world and under totalitarian regimes ''' were in grave danger.

Every year, Turkey issues statements denouncing the murder of Jews, Gypsies and others by the Nazis on the day of remembrance, but has not previously held an official ceremony, according to The Associated Press. The Nazis saw the world as an arena of races, the most "advanced" being the "Aryan" one, which the Germans were believed to represent. The Jews were not only from a "lower" race, the Semitic one, they were also "corrupting" the Aryan blood by assimilating into German culture. They had to be "cleansed" from the whole "living space" of the Germans - and, ultimately, the whole world. This ideology sounds totally crazy for us today, but in the 1930s it sounded quite "scientific" to many in Germany and even beyond. Social Darwinism - a pseudo-science - was the fashion of the day, and the "advanced" German society was easily captured by its racist themes. According to thinkers such as Leo Strauss, the excessive secularization of the German society before and during the Weimar Republic played a negative role here, uprooting the strong religious traditions that could have created more resistance to the Nazis' "modern" madness. This, I believe, must be a lesson for all those who still believe that societies must be solely guided according to "science and reason" - an early 20th century naïveté which is still quite popular among Turkey's Kemalists. The Iranian leader has also frequently and publicly denied the Holocaust, calling it a "myth." Netanyahu said world leaders were aware of the mass murder of the Jews being carried out by the Nazis during the Holocaust but failed to act, and urged them not to make the same mistake today. "They knew and did not act," Netanyahu said. "Today they know, they hear, they see, they film," Netanyahu said of Iran's threats.

There are very few remaining survivors of the camps. It's been 66 years since the Allied powers defeated the Nazis ending the Holocaust. After spending months in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Flug was sent to help build bunkers for Hitler and other German leaders. He strongly supports the preservation efforts, painful as they are. "It is very important," he says, "because people who have been in Auschwitz are today old and in some years nobody shall be that can say, I have been in Auschwitz. It is the most authentic place where the Germans murdered more than a million people. It is''very important to preserve what exists in Auschwitz:''the barracks, the houses, the sauna.'' For us as survivors it is very important the existence of such an authentic place." The party, organized by Peled'''s son Or, was initially intended as a surprise, but it'''s very hard to keep a secret here under any circumstances, and certainly, with so large an invitation list, there was bound to be a leak ''' and there was. Peled, who was a director of several companies prior to becoming an MK, retained the friendships he had made in those circles and there were also a lot of business people present. In an emotional address, Peled referred to Auschwitz, where last year he had accompanied Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the 65th anniversary commemoration of liberation, and spoke of his father who had perished there. Of course Czech Ambassador Tomas Pojar, who was roundly praised for his help in getting the new chamber up and running, was also present.

A new memorial is opening in Germany that examines the role played by educated professionals such as the engineers and architects who created the crematoria ovens for Auschwitz to help carry out the Holocaust. Survivors, scholars and a performing artist will provide different perspectives such as eyewitness accounts, scholarly research and cultural presentations during the Greater Miami Jewish Federation's Holocaust Memorial's ninth annual Holocaust Education Week. Held at the holocaust memorial the service remembered Marianne Grunfeld, Theresa Steiner and Auguste Spitz. Reverend Andrew Sharp, who led the service, said: "It was a sorrowful occasion in Guernseys history." For 2011, the theme will be, '''Women and the Holocaust: Courage and Compassion.''' Many memorials today will be held around the United States to honor the Holocaust victims and their memory.

Organizers said the decision had nothing to do with the memorial day, but was related to a disagreement with the distributor. Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein and European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor held a press conference in Brussels at which they lashed out against the planned German screening. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski and his German counterpart, Christian Wulff, were expected to meet with youth and former Auschwitz camp prisoners. They were later to lay wreaths at a memorial and make speeches during day-long ceremonies. "Meeting the presidents and camp survivors was an extraordinary history lesson," German high school student Carolin Brauer told AFP.

The remains of the camp, which is "more memorial than museum," Kastelaniec says, "show the complexity of history of Nazis during the Second World War." Like the Jews, Europe's Roma were deemed an inferior race by the Nazis. Out of an estimated total of seven million people killed in the camps it's estimated between a quarter to half a million were Roma gypsies. One million Jews from all over Europe perished there, mostly in the camp gas chambers, along with tens of thousands of others including Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and homosexuals. The boy ran and boarded it unnoticed, and later found refuge with relations. Historians estimate the Nazis murdered up to 500,000 Sinti and Roma during their rule, while between 5 million and 6 million Jews lost their lives. Nazi Germany killed about 1.1 million Jews, Gypsies and others at the site then in occupied Poland. The biggest extermination camp of Nazi Germany's Third Reich was in annexed south-western Poland. Ninety percent of its victims were Jews.

The genocide of European Jewry occurred not only because of the vulnerability of the powerless, but also because of the powerlessness of the vulnerable. It is not surprising that the triage of Nazi racial hygiene ''' the Sterilization Laws, the Nuremberg Race Laws, the Euthanasia Program ''' targeted those '''whose lives were not worth living'''; and it is not unrevealing, as Professor Henry Friedlander points out in his work on '''The Origins of Genocide''', that the first group targeted for killing were the Jewish disabled ''' the whole anchored in the science of death, the medicalization of ethnic cleansing, the sanitizing even of the vocabulary of destruction. So it is our responsibility as citoyens du monde to give voice to the voiceless, as we seek to empower the powerless ''' be they the disabled, the poor, the refugee, the elderly, the women victims of violence, the vulnerable child ''' the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. For as we remember the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah ''' defamed, demonized and dehumanized, as prologue or justification for genocide ''' we have to understand that the mass murder of six million Jews and millions of non-Jews is not a matter of abstract statistics. "To remember is a choice, and today we remember the innocent victims of the Nazis''' murderous hate ''' six million Jews and millions of other people.

The international day of commemoration marks the day Auschwitz- Birkenau ''' where about one million Jews and more than 100,000 others were murdered ''' was liberated by the Soviets. Since that day was established, its integrity has been diluted by those who would use it as a springboard for commemorating a series of fundamentally different events. Events commemorating International Holocaust Day took place in countries around the world.

January 27 was picked as the day that Auschwitz-Berkinau concentration camp was liberated. When this day was declared, members of the U.N. became obligated to develop educational programs as part of an international resolve to help prevent future acts of genocide. Lucie Lasker was taken to Theresienstadt. Although the camp had no gas chambers, people were given no food and they lived in appalling conditions. At her age and in those conditions, Lucie would not have been expected to live long. "We understand that she died within two weeks of coming to that particular concentration camp," said Ben. "If my great-grandmother can serve as a example as somebody who was very ordinary, but somebody whose story we understand a little bit more, then it might help us to actually understand and bring to life some of those thousands and maybe millions of people whose stories will never be told." Soviet troops who liberated Polish Silesia, found the concentration camp where only 2,819 people survived.

Ben from Deal's great-grandmother died in a concentration camp in WWII. After his mother died, Ben found a postcard in the attic. It was sent from his great-grandmother who was being held in a camp in Germany. He decided to find out more about her story. One of the first concentration camps was Dachau, which opened on March 20, 1933, outside of Munich, Germany.

Auschwitz, in addition to being a concentration camp, was one of six extermination camps. In concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck, they were the subject of grotesque medical experiments. The most famous of the concentration camps was Auschwitz, which became an extermination camp in spring of 1942.

Sixty-six years ago today, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated. '''Germans knew what was going on, though,''' Plaks said. '''Maybe they didn'''t know the specifics, but they knew more perhaps than historians give them credit for.''' Plaks explains that when Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces, liberated concentration camps, he ordered photographers to document the event. '''Eisenhower said to them, '''Someday there will be fools who deny this ever happened.''''''

The Nazis transported Jews and other political prisoners to a variety of camps - called concentration, extermination, labor, prisoner-of-war, and transit camps. The Roma and related Sinti, like the Jews deemed racially inferior by the Nazis, were also systematically persecuted, confined to ghettos and special camps, deported and killed.

The majority of Holocaust victims were Jews, but historians estimate up to 500,000 Roma also died. Some were Jews, some were not. At that particular moment, we were all Jews - for we all shared the sorrow for the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The notes were transcribed and sent to the rebbe in New York. He sang it in the synagogue on Yom Kippur in memory of the 6 million Jews who had been murdered. Congregants wept as he explained the origin of the tune. With this tune, he said, the Jews went to the gas chambers, and with this tune they will greet the messiah.

Well-educated soldiers, civil servants, scientists, engineers and doctors sat down and designed transportation systems, death camps and gas chambers to annihilate millions of innocent men, women and children. They committed the most unspeakable crime in the most unbelievable way. An advancing Soviet army liberated the Nazi death camp Auschwitz- Birkenau on January 27, 1945. One only has to read Gerhard Muller's book on '''Hitler'''s Justice''' to appreciate the complicity and criminality of judges and lawyers; or to read Robert-Jan van Pelt's book on the architecture of Auschwitz, to be appalled by the minute involvement of engineers and architects in the design of death camps, and so on. By 1943, Topf & Sons had equipped the death camp with four crematoria where as many as 8,000 corpses could be burned in a day.

Commemorative events will be also staged in other Russian cities. Important events on this occasion will be held in the Kaliningrad Region where commemorative actions will last four days, Itar-Tass learnt at the RJC. The monument 'To victims of the death march in Palmniken' will be unveiled in the town of Yantarny on January 30. At UCO, Dr. Jeff Plaks keeps the memory of the event alive by teaching graduate seminars dedicated to the subject. He invited survivors of the Holocaust to attend and speak to students about the event. His seminars are generally held around the 27 th, or of Kristallnacht. The events of the Holocaust are part of the history of an extraordinary number of nations and people. Although some would seek to mystify the Shoah or isolate it from the course of human events, it is firmly rooted in history, with antecedents and results, bearing varying degrees of similarity to other events. Equally, and sometimes even more compelling, are those aspects of the Holocaust that are unparalleled. These can be more difficult to grasp, let alone explain, but above all they comprise a tremendous challenge to ensure that they won'''t be repeated.

Jewish ethics are at the core of Western civilization'''s code of morality, which stands firmly against murder, and how much more so against crimes like the Holocaust. The Nazis and their partners, who were rebelling against that code, struck specifically against the group that stood for this biblical tradition, and its standards of human behavior. The General Assembly notes the Holocaust, which wiped out one-third of the Jewish population at that time, '''will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice.''' Two Jewish men, who had survived months in that hell, finally tasted freedom that day, and went on to teach the world the lessons of the Holocaust. These men moved on to become authors and speakers; both are intelligent, thoughtful, and well-spoken, yet have arrived at very different conclusions about what the lessons of the Holocaust actually are.

The operation in Entebbe to rescue the Jewish passengers aboard an Air France plane in 1976 is the most famous example of the Jewish state'''s commitment to Jews in distress everywhere. early last year, the UK-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research polled 4,000 Diaspora Jews on their attitudes toward Israel. While an impressive 87% felt that Jews are responsible for ensuring '''the survival of Israel,''' only 31% agreed that the State of Israel has a responsibility for '''ensuring the safety of Jews around the world.''' These figures appear to demonstrate the feeling that it is a one-way relationship. According to those polled, there are almost three times the number of Diaspora Jews who feel they are responsible for Israel as the other way around.

Just remembering the Holocaust is not enough. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni condemned the statements of both Netanyahu and Rivlin. '''It is forbidden to compare the situation of Israel to that of the Jews of the Holocaust,''' she said. Anti semitisme must be destroyed-and people who shouting that jews must wipe out of the card or destroy and the holocaust never happened should be punished- it are dangerous people, a danger for the whole world. With the Nazi invasion, Fastag, like so many other Jews in Warsaw, was rounded up and put in a cattle car going to Treblinka. He began to sing as the train rumbled toward its fateful destination. Initially there was silence, but as he repeated the melody over and over, it reached the hearts of the people on the train, nearly all of whom knew the words that were a testament of faith in the coming of the messiah. The Nazis announced a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses. They issued The Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship and prohibited marriages and extramarital affairs between Jews and Germans. Jews were excluded from public places like parks, they were fired from government related jobs, and Jewish doctors were limited to practicing only on Jewish patients. In Berlin, the German parliament convened Thursday for a special session commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. Parliament speaker Norbert Lammert told lawmakers it is the duty of later generations to keep alive the memory of those murdered by German Nazis. '''A core component in the Holocaust and in Hitler'''s rule was Nazi ideology,''' Plaks said. Plaks said that the Holocaust cannot fully be understood in isolation. He explained, students must understand the events that preceded it. In his classes, Plaks explains the causes that led to the advent of Hitler and the Third Reich.

The United Nations building was shut down due to the bad weather. Other Holocaust commemoration events planned for Thursday in New York also were postponed, according to reports. In January 2008, the United Nations Outreach Programme unveiled the first permanent exhibit on the Holocaust. This exhibit, located at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, has 400,000 annual visitors.

Despite the exhortation of '''never again,''' the 20th century was the darkest chapter on record and we face new genocides today. Today'''s observances remind us that our wish to never again be confronted by such atrocities still brings us to a place where action falls short. In Illinois we have a special opportunity to transform this promise into practice, to create a mandate dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Holocaust and fostering the promotion of human rights and the elimination of genocide. The enduring lesson of the Holocaust is that the genocide of European Jewry succeeded not only because of the industry of death and the technology of terror, but because of the state-sanctioned ideology of hate. This teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, this is where it all began. The genocide of European Jewry succeeded not only because of the state-sanctioned culture of hate and industry of death, but because of crimes of indifference, because of conspiracies of silence. We have already witnessed an appalling indifference and inaction in our own day which took us down the road to the unspeakable ''' the genocide in Rwanda ''' unspeakable because this genocide was preventable.

The two leaders also laid flowers at the foot of the notorious wall of death in Auschwitz where the Nazis shot dead thousands. Survivor David Levin, 85, who now lives in Germany, was 16 when he was deported to Auschwitz. Berlin will also name a street and a gymnasium after Roma murdered by the Nazis. "It is the first time that the fate of the Sinti and Roma of Europe has been placed at the centre of the commemorations," said Romani Rose, the head of the Council of Sinti and Roma in Germany. "Ede and Unku" was banned by the Nazis and its young author Grete Weiskof, a Jewish communist writing under the name Alex Wedding, fled Germany in 1933.

Ben's great-grandmother was Lucie Lasker. She was in Riebnig, a transit camp, where she had been taken following the removal of most of the Jewish community from the town of Breslau in Germany. "They wanted to clear the Jewish community not just because they wanted to murder them, but also because they needed their accommodation for soldiers and refugees," said Ben. Over the years, the Jewish community has come to rely on JTA as the single most credible source of news and analysis available about events and issues of Jewish interest anywhere in the world. The ceremony of lighting commemorative candles will be held at the Moscow Jewish Community Centre and in the Grand Synagogue in the Russian capital, Itar-Tass learnt from representatives of Russian Jewish communities. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto''lu's message at the ceremony commemorated the loss of life, hailing Turkey's Jewish community. "It is natural result of our culture of living together to share the pain that they experienced in the past, as this reflects our tolerance for each other as a state and community. They are part of our community and will remain as such," the statement said.

In addition to Jewish community members who participated in the commemoration, also present were ''stanbul Mayor Kadir Topba''; Turkey's chief rabbi, Ishak Haleva; ''i''li Mayor Mustafa Sar''g''l; Beyo''lu Mayor Ahmet Misbah Demircan; Be''ikta'' Mayor ''smail ''nal; Democrat Party (DP) Chairman Nam''k Kemal Zeybek; Republican People's Party's (CHP) ''stanbul branch head Nebil ''lseven; and Adalar Mayor Mustafa Farsako''lu.

With the current assault on Israel's legitimacy growing, the Jewish people as a whole are being targeted. Addressing the German parliament for the ceremony, Mr Weisz singled out France and Italy as countries where Roma communities face discrimination and exclusion. He said it was unacceptable that his people are still being shut out and robbed of a chance of a better future. "In western European countries such as Italy and France, Roma are again facing discrimination and exclusion and living in inhumane conditions in ghettos," he said. Addressing the German parliament, the Bundestag, Mr Weisz singled out France and Italy as countries where Roma faced new "discrimination and exclusion". "We are Europeans, let me remind you, and must have the same rights as any other resident, with the same opportunities available to every European," he said. "It is unacceptable that a people that has been discriminated against and oppressed for centuries is today, in the 21st Century, still shut out and robbed of any honest chance of a better future."

The Sderot plant employs 500 people. Other plants are in other peripheral areas with the aim of providing employment for the local population. Propper has always lived by his father'''s maxim: '''Work hard during the day so you can sleep well at night.''' Feiglin, a religious nationalist, is gaining an increasing number of followers, as witnessed at his annual gala dinner held last week at the Leonardo Hotel in Ramat Gan, which was attended by more than 500 people who paid NIS 400 each. The musical fanfare and cheers that went up when Feiglin approached the stage prompted him to say that he felt as if he was the new coach for the Betar Jerusalem soccer team. He commented that of all the dinners that his faction has had to date, this was the largest. He also referred to what he called '''the collapse of the Labor Party,''' asking the audience not to applaud. That'''s what happened to Rafi Farber, 62, a former director-general of the Tourism Ministry and subsequently head of its North American office. He obviously made so good an impression that after returning and going into the hotel business, he kept getting reelected to the executive of the Hotels Association. He now owns two hotels in Jerusalem and one in Tiberias. There is a crying need for more hotels in the capital, says Farber, and the association will work toward attracting more investment in hotel construction. Born in Ramat Gan to a rabbinical family, Horowitz, 54, did his army service in Kiryat Shmona, arriving there in 1978. At the time, he was focused on a pedagogic career, and recognizing the need for good teachers there, decided to stay. He became a teacher in the state religious school, and was frequently interviewed by the media following Katyusha rocket attacks. His descriptions were so fluent, graphic and accurate that he was offered a job with Army Radio. He subsequently became a print media reporter as well, reporting from all over the North for Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post and the now defunct Hadashot and Hatzofeh. In 1994, Channel 2 news appointed him as its man in the North. One memorable production was when he took the totally irreligious (and sometimes anti-religious) Tommy Lapid on a Jewish roots tour of the Galilee that included meals in kosher eateries, with Lapid good-humoredly chiding Horowitz on the gourmet delights he was missing because he observed kashrut. Horowitz will have his formal farewell to the North not in the North, but at the Leonardo Hotel in Ramat Gan on February 5. Rumor has it that he can'''t bring himself to sell his home in Kiryat Shmona. He'''s not burning his bridges.

The ceremony comes amid a serious rift between Turkey and Israel over the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinians. The lessons of the holocaust, and in particular, state sanctioned intolerance, need to be applied in Israel today. There is a well-known sentiment along the lines of if there had been an Israel 70 years ago, there would have been no Holocaust. While this is undoubtedly true, perhaps for the generations who were born after the Holocaust it requires further explanation. '''We always have the Holocaust in mind and our leaders must justifiably ask themselves if we recognize a threat in time and how to act. '''But parents who ask themselves what they would do if they lived at that time must not be given the feeling that Israel is in a similar situation. Israel is not defenseless or in exile alone against evil that tried to destroy them because of who they are.''' Netanyahu asks "Where is the fury, international uprising" against Iran; Livni: Comparison of current times to Holocaust is wrong. If the 20th Century ''' symbolized by the Holocaust ''' was the age of atrocity, it was also the age of impunity. Few of the perpetrators were brought to justice; and so, just as there must be no sanctuary for hate, no refuge for bigotry, there must be no base or sanctuary for these enemies of humankind. Those indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity ''' such as President Al-Bashir of Sudan ''' continue to be welcomed in international fora. The writer is a member of Parliament and the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada. He is Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, and has written extensively on the Holocaust, genocide and international humanitarian law. '''To U.S. credit, the Bush administration was the first to use the term '''genocide,'''''' Plaks said. '''The generation today needs to think about what happened in the Holocaust,''' he said. '''If such brutality was possible when no one suspected, that means there'''s always a chance it would happen again.''' Plaks does not see history as inevitable, and noted that there are many things that lead to such situations. '''We tend to think of great heroes, who '''make''' history,''' he said. Unlike most massacres and genocides in history, the Holocaust was not driven by a sudden burst of anger, fear, paranoia or revenge. It was rather driven almost purely by ideology.

As the UN marks the commemoration of the Holocaust, we are witnessing yet again, a state-sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide, whose epicentre is Ahmadinejad'''s Iran.

Memory can be a graveyard, but it can also be the true kingdom of man.''' These words, so eloquently spoken by Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, address the pledge that our generation and future generations must undertake to uphold the torch of remembrance and accept the legacy bestowed upon us. I am creating a Holocaust siddur and a Holocaust Hagaddah website to preserve Holocaust memory. I am seeking approrpriate material for Holocaust survivors, their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. The general public is welcome to participate along with the diplomats and Holocaust survivors who will be in attendance.

According to historians, somewhere about 220 to 500,000 gypsies were eliminated during Holocaust. Weisz is the only survivor in his family, who was deported in 1944 when he was 7 years old. In November 2005 the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to set aside January 27 each year to commemorate the Holocaust.

The Bundestag said Mr Weisz was "surprised and honoured" to have been chosen to speak on the "forgotten Holocaust" - the extermination, historians have estimated, of between 220,000 and 500,000 of the around one million Roma in Europe. As the Canadian courts affirmed in upholding the constitutionality of anti-hate legislation, '''the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers ''' it began with words'''. These, as the Courts put it, are the chilling facts of history. These are the catastrophic effects of racism. The survivors and the material evidence pointed to the mass murder that had taken place in Auschwitz. Though warehouses had been burnt, the gas chambers still stand to this day. "For me personally it is quite meaningful and I'm honored to be among the panelists at Miami- Dade," Sachs added. Kassenoff plans to ask the survivors questions such as "What is the most memorable day during your years in the camps?" "How did you feel the day of liberation?" "Where did you immediately go and turn to?" and "Did you have family left?" "These are the kinds of questions I plan to ask so that the audience can get a sense of their memories and what their story is through question and answer," she said. Jan. 27 marks the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp by the Soviet army 66 years ago.

The camp was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945 by the Soviet army. Christian Wulff said before the ceremonies at the Auschwitz site that each generation must consider how civilization broke down in the Nazi era and work to prevent such crimes from ever repeating. The monument, produced by Israeli sculptor Frank Maisler, will be unveiled on the coast of the Baltic Sea, on whose ice Nazis gunned down several thousands of Jewish inmates of camps and ghettos in January 1945.

Islanders have paid tribute to three Jewish women who died at Auschwitz after being deported from Guernsey during World War II. Last week, someone broke in, threw many of the exhibits onto the floor and stole two cameras used for animation. Bau had built them himself 60 years earlier. The cameras, of course, have historic value, but beyond that have nostalgic and emotional value for Bau'''s daughters who travel the world to tell his story. They are hoping that the thief will feel some kind of remorse and restore the stolen items. His father and many other relatives were murdered in Auschwitz. His mother survived the war, reclaimed her children and brought them here. Peled had a distinguished army career from which he retired in 1991 with the rank of major-general. He celebrated his 70th birthday on January 18. Some 450 people came to the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds to wish him well. Among them were political adversaries from the Labor Party such as Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Isaac Herzog and Avishay Braverman and members of Ehud Barak'''s Independence faction. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni was also there, along with Dalia Itzik, and the Likud was very well represented by both ministers and MKs. Ten years ago, about 400,000 people, mostly from Poland, the U.S. and Israel, visited the site. In Israel, a discussion is now taking place on when the Iranian bomb will be operational. Vice Premier Moshe Ya'''alon estimates that this will take approximately three years. Meir Dagan, until recently head of the Mossad, thinks that this will not happen before 2015. The numerous and murderous threats by Iran'''s highest spiritual and political leaders such as the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, his successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to destroy Israel, turn it into the main target of such a bomb. It is now clear that other countries are also worried. Propper was unperturbed, knowing from experience that it would rise again. This year will mark the 60th anniversary of IBCA, which was established at a time when relations between Britain and Israel were not good, said Science. The principal objective at that time was to improve those relations.

Ayalon was confident that under the leadership of Propper and others involved in the new chamber, the figure will rise to $1 billion within the next decade. Only a few days earlier, he had given a riveting address at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to the Israel Britain and the Commonwealth Association. He was speaking in his capacity as chairman of Osem Foods, of which his late father had been one of the founders. With correspondents in New York, Washington, Jerusalem, Moscow and dozens of other cities around the globe, JTA is able to provide in-depth coverage of political, economic and social developments affecting Jews in North and South America, Israel, Europe, Africa and Australia. PM has rightly said that that Jews have historic right to whole of Land of Israel. What he did not say is that Israel has an Obligation to keep all of it in Jewish hands. All of us have a responsibility for the Jewish future, and no less so in our land. While we share the responsibility to defend its borders and physically build the nation, Jews in the Diaspora have a responsibility to defend Israel from those who seek to defame it.

Diaspora didn't want to be taken over by Jews, not in Germany nor in America etc. Causeless internicine hatred reins in today's Israel. Once combined, all of this anti-Israel propaganda and related activities could lead to such huge political pressure that Israel would have no choice but to return to indefensible borders ''' those which Abba Eban once termed '''the Auschwitz borders.''' If this scenario comes to fruition, it increases the possibility of a - be it delayed - mass murder of Israeli Jews.

For the Nazis were not just the enemies of the Jews. They were the enemies of all forms of Semitic monotheism, which naturally included Islam as well. This is evident in especially the early writing of the Nazi ideologues - at a time when they were not looking for allies in the Arab world, such as al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem. In his influential book, "The Myth of the Twentieth Century," Alfred Rosenberg warned white races "against the united hatred of colored races and mongrels led in the fanatical spirit of Mohammed." In a Nazi essay on Islam, Genghis Khan, the Mongol despot that massacred millions of Muslims in the 13th century, was praised as a hero who saved the Middle East from its "Semitic oppressors." In essence, the attempt to destroy the Jews was an attempt to destroy Western civilization and replace it with a Nazi perversion of society. Of course, one could say that communism, too ''' in the name of which horrible crimes were committed ''' also sought to recast Western civilization in its own image. Although this is true, communist theory rests on many of the concepts derived from the biblical and humanist traditions regarding social justice and human dignity, even as it rejects religion. It is the Nazi attack on the Jews, and all this implies, that continues to shake Western civilization to its foundations. It is to this crime that philosophers and theologians apply concepts such as '''rupture,''' '''watershed,''' '''caesura,''' '''tremendum''' or '''epoch-making.''' It is a crime that beggars both imagination and language.

Nearby Birkenau added gas chambers, and the gassing of Jews became procedure, rather than merely experimental. Deeming their plans the '''Final Solution,''' the Nazis managed to cover up in official documentation much of what occurred.

Established in 2005 by the United Nations General Assembly, it is an annual day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi era. Before the war, Fastag, who had an exceptional voice, was known far and wide. People came from all over Warsaw to hear him sing. On the High Holy Days when his brothers would join him, he sang in the synagogue of Modzitzer Rebbe Shaul Yedidya Elazar. The world had seen all sorts of brutal massacres and tortures, but the Nazis were the only people in history who crafted a whole "industry" to exterminate a whole people. The company supplied furnaces to the Nazis in 1942 to burn the bodies of up to 1 million dead more efficiently at Auschwitz, now in modern-day Poland. The eastern Berlin district of Friedrichshain will rename a street "Ede and Unku", the name of a 1931 book telling the true story of a friendship between a German worker's son and a Sinti girl before the Nazi era. "Unku", a nickname for Erna Lauenberger, was deported with her family and killed at Auschwitz. "The name Auschwitz stands unlike anything else for the crimes perpetuated by Germans against millions of human beings," Wulff said in a speech. "They fill us Germans with disgust and shame. They lay upon us a historical responsibility that is independent of individual guilt. We must never again allow such crimes.

According to the Auschwitz commandant whose reminiscences were recently published, over four million inmates were interned in the camp.

West Germany did not recognise the genocide until 1982. "Germany had played down this genocide for decades," said Silvio Peritore, of the Central Council of Sinti and Roma. Mr Weisz, the son of an instrument maker, was just seven in 1944, when his family was deported from the eastern Dutch town of Zutphen. He escaped the raid with the help of a policeman. His parents, sisters and younger brother were murdered at Auschwitz, while Mr Weisz survived in hiding. He later became florist to Holland's royal family. Germany has moved to commemorate the Roma people by naming a street and a school after prominent Roma figures. Last year France began expelling Roma migrants to Bulgaria and Romania, straining ties with Germany and drawing legal action from the European Union, which was later dropped.

The speaker of the German parliament Norbert Lammert, said during the solemn ceremony that the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany must never be forgotten. German President Christian Wulff was in Poland to attend ceremonies on the site of Auschwitz itself.

The two leaders then traveled the short distance to Birkenau, the vast camp where people were brought by train from all across Europe to be killed with factory-like efficiency in gas chambers. "We share a 500-year history of peace with our Jewish citizens," ''stanbul Governor H''seyin Avni Mutlu told the NTV news channel after the service. "We wanted to share their pain and suffering."