January 27 is observed as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The date was established by a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on November 1, 2005. On this day in 1945, the few survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp were liberated. This happened in the process of the Allied forces' victory over Hitler and the entry of the Red Army into the camp.
Auschwitz remains a symbol of Nazi genocide. Several million people from all over Europe were deported to it.
Around 232,000 children were deported to Auschwitz,
of which approximately 216,000 were of Jewish origin, 11,000 of Roma origin, around 3,000 of Polish origin, more than 1,000 of Belarusian origin and several hundred of Russian, Ukrainian and other origin.
Over 200,000 children were killed in Auschwitz. Completely innocent, kind, curious about life, loving their loved ones, trusting children. Never before has the world of adults, which is very often unjust and cruel, shown its heartlessness and malice so strongly. This cannot be justified by any ideology, any considerations, any politics. We want to dedicate this year's celebration of the liberation to the smallest victims of the camp - said the director of the museum, Dr. Pyotr M. A. Tsivinsky.
In total, millions died in the camps, and the exact figures are difficult to calculate. Almost the entire Jewish population of Europe was destroyed, about 6 million people. It is known that in the Nazi death camps, in addition to Jews and prisoners of war, critics of Hitler, humanists, communists, democrats and all kinds of political opponents of the Nazis also died.
Initially, the Nazi camps were created specifically for political opponents. Homosexuals, Roma, and Slavs were also persecuted and killed.
The genocide against the Jews became part of the very foundation of Nazi ideology.
The cruelty with which it was carried out is also unimaginable, no one was spared. Poor and rich, atheists and religious, babies and the elderly: it was enough to be Jewish, the next characteristic was just a detail.
The Holocaust is notable not only for the number of Jews killed and the unprecedented cruelty, but also for the fact that it is the genocide that, due to its size, receives the most publicity. That is why the memory of this shameful moment in human history acts as a reminder of how far ideologies based on racism and the idea of the superiority of one ethnic or national community over another can go.
77 years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz on 27 January 1945,
Members of the European Parliament will mark the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.
The ceremony will open at 1.30pm (Bulgarian time) with a speech by European Parliament President Roberta Mezzola, followed by a musical interlude.
100-year-old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer will address MEPs.
The commemoration will end with a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and a second musical interlude.
Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer will address the special plenary session on the occasion of the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, the European Parliament's press service announced.
Margot Friedländer was born in 1921 in Berlin. In 1943, her mother and brother were deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. She went into hiding until the age of 21, but in 1944 she was tracked down and deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. She is the only surviving member of her family. Together with her husband Adolf Friedlander, whom she knew from Berlin and met again in Theresienstadt, Margot moved to the United States in 1946. In 2010 she returned to Berlin.
Margot Friedlander still travels around Germany, telling her story and life experiences in schools. "They listen to me carefully", she said in an interview. "I have received - I don't know - thousands of letters. I speak for those who cannot speak. And not just the six million Jews. I speak on behalf of all who were killed and who suffered".