11 April: International Day to Remember the Liberation of the Prisoners of the Nazi Concentration Camps
Yefim Tsvik
1985
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Holocaust Remembrance Day, 19 April, falls on the anniversary of the heroic Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, when a Nazi SS brigade that was herding its population to death camps paid a heavy price in blood for weeks at the hands of Jewish fighters armed with Molotov cocktails. The commemoration day designated by the UN General Assembly, 27 January, is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops in 1945. These two dates reflect an evolving perception of the Holocaust in our newly-inflamed post-September 11 world, from a uniquely Jewish catastrophe to a universal one. As a survivor of Auschwitz, and currently an Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy of UNESCO for Holocaust education, I’m commemorating that tragedy with the Jews of Turkey… a country that’s welcomed and protected them from the time of the Spanish Inquisition to Hitler’s “Final Solution”.
My mission isn’t only to lament the victims, but also to alert world leaders and the public at large to the risk of new catastrophes that may destroy their universe, as they once destroyed mine. The ashes of Auschwitz speak to us about the present and the future, as well as the past. In the 1930s, when rampant economic and political upheavals unleashed insecurity and fear, popular folly recruited diabolic “saviours”. This is how democracies perished and the hunt for scapegoats began. Since my liberation from Dachau by American GIs, new genocides, ethnic cleansings, and other mass atrocities confirm that the human capacity for evil knows no bounds. Indeed, that the unthinkable is again possible, with plagues of toxic gas, atomic mushroom clouds, and ballistic missiles in the dangerous hands of new despots and fanatics.
Thus, when incendiary demagogues with nuclear ambitions reopen our wounds by calling the Holocaust a “myth”, we, the last living survivors, have a visceral obligation to testify that it was both a gruesome reality for us and an existential warning for all mankind of horrors yet to come. However, we must follow our words with action, with concrete policies of remembrance and education that can raise public awareness of how such slaughters erupt and how we can prevent them. Today, I can attest that this process has begun.
For last year’s commemoration, I found myself in Auschwitz at the behest of “Project Aladdin”, launched by the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and UNESCO. Two hundred Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders met in Paris for that pilgrimage, including heads of state, mayors of major capitals, Chief Rabbis, Grand Muftis, and Cardinals. In the cursed barbed-wire enclosure of Birkenau, where I once saw the proud ship of civilisation go under, where I lost my family and all the children of my school, it fell upon me to bear witness. Surrounded by relics of gas chambers and crematoria, united by common pain and shared human values, our unlikely assembly transcended all racial, religious, and political strife and prayed to the same God.
After that manifestation of solidarity, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives invited a group of us to testify before it. There, we reiterated the warning that unless we dissipate the abysmal ignorance and distortion of the Holocaust, unite against anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and terrorism, and espouse the core moral values inherent in our great creeds… spiritual and secular… the forces of darkness will return to doom our future. However, my principal focus was on the promising potential for expanded dialogue, revealed by the encounters in Paris, Auschwitz, and Washington. The Grand Mufti of Bosnia, Dr Mustafa Ceric, who was also with us, confirmed that potential with these words, “I came to see for myself the evil man can do to man, and to say that those who deny the Holocaust of Auschwitz or the genocide of Srebrenica, are committing genocides themselves”.
True, one swallow does not make a spring, but his declaration profoundly moved all his coreligionists, of every stripe and from every continent; the palpable evidence of Nazi barbarism shocked them, as it did the rest of us. It was also obvious that the barbarians of today who kill and maim innocents at random, including their own kin, equally disturbed them. This raised the hope of a more tolerable coexistence between vast silent majorities of people who don’t consider themselves “sworn enemies”. That “Project Aladdin” is now making available, in cooperation with local institutions, Turkish, Arabic, and Iranian versions of Holocaust books like The Diary of Anne Frank, films like Shoah, and other links for people-to-people contacts suggests that the hope is real.
It also suggests that political or diplomatic skirmishes of an altogether different nature mustn’t derail UN organisations entrusted with lofty fundamental responsibilities from their legitimate specialised tasks, especially UNESCO. This is all the more so in a deteriorating international environment that’s pushing us toward a fateful crossroads… shall we retreat into a dark age of unmanageable global turmoil, or, shall we move forward with new leaps of imagination, innovation, and creativity that could revive the enthusiasm and energies of younger generations?
Having experienced the lowest depths and a few summits of the human condition in the course of my tortuous odyssey, I’ve learned and written that there’s a way free of hatred and violence to deal with the intractable challenges of our time. That way calls for collective efforts to liberate the inexhaustible resources of human intelligence, knowledge, and compassion that exist in ample measure among peoples of every region, race, colour, and faith. Developed and made accessible through the precious channels of education, science, and culture, these resources can usher in a new era of tolerance, prosperity, and peace… before it is too late.
19 April 2012
Samuel Pisar
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20120419/172913663.html
Editor’s Note:
We must refuse to support those who offer violence as a first resort in international, domestic, and personal venues. That’s why we must vote against all Republican candidates in the coming election. That’s what they stood for in the Reagan and Bush years, that’s what they stand for now, and that’s the sort of policy that Mitt Romney and Company would implement. Remember the secret torture facilities run by Langley and the Republican coddling of gun nutters and racists when you vote… if you vote for the GOP, you vote FOR hidden torture in secret locations, the scrapping of all reasonable gun laws, indiscriminate bombing of civilians, the protection of racist vigilantes, and perpetual warfare in foreign parts.
We CAN avert that…
BMD
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Voices from Russia 
12 November 2014. 96 Years Since the “Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month”… Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth and France Unveils Memorial to the War Dead in Flanders
Tags: Australia, Australian War Memorial, Britain, Canada, Canberra, cenotaph, England, France, Great Britain, holidays, Holidays and Observances, London, memorial, Notre Dame de Lorette, patriotic, patriotism, political commentary, politics, remembrance, Remembrance Day, Remembrance Sunday, Toronto, Tower of London, United Kingdom, veteran, veterans, World War I
A man places a memorial poppy on the wall at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra ACT AUSTRALIA
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An honour guard at the Cenotaph near the Old City Hall in Toronto ON CANADA
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“Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” at the Tower of London London ENGLAND UK
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French troops at the dedication of the L’Anneau de la Mémoire/Memorial international Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (Ring of Remembrance) memorial wall with over 500,000 names of those of all nations who fell in Northern France, at the Nécropole nationale de Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in Ablain St-Nazaire FRANCE (the world’s largest French military cemetery). This event was also in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I (“The Great War”).
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