January 27, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Julius Meinl, President of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, at the head of the EAJC delegation took part in ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz by Soviet troops.
Ceremony held at the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, gathered more than three thousand participants from around the world, including about 300 surviving prisoners of the Nazis.
Heads of State and Government arrived in Poland to take part in a ceremony: French President Francois Hollande, German President Joachim Gauck, Austrian President Heinz Fischer, King Philippe of Belgium, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. United States were represented by the Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the Russian Federation by Sergei Ivanov, President’s chief of staff.
“Today, in the name of truth, we need to fight the attempts to relativize the Shoah,” President Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland said, opening the ceremony, "The memory of Auschwitz means the memory of the importance of freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights.”
Leaders of the world Jewish institutions, prominent public and cultural figures were among the participants. Half of the speakers at the ceremony were Jewish, represented the vast majority of those who were killed at Auschwitz. Among them – Roman Kent and Helena Birenbaum, the surviving prisoners of the death camp. “Jews are targeted in Europe once again because they are Jews”, President of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder noted in his speech.
He appealed to state leaders presented at the event, calling for "zero tolerance toward any kind of hatred." “Unless this is checked right now, it will be too late’, WJC leader said.
Together with the EAJC president at the ceremony were the General Council Chairman Joseph Zissels (Ukraine), CEO Haim Ben Yacov (Israel), the head of the Moscow office Natalya Schmidt (Russia), a member of the General Council Elena Berkovich (Georgia), First deputy chairman of the Union of Belarusian Jewish associations and сcommunities Vladimir Chernitskii (Belarus), as well as members of the International Union of Jews – former prisoners of fascism, the EAJC member.
As the EAJC President Julius Meinl noted: "It is difficult to understand the scale of the killings that took place in the concentration camps all over the continent. To understand the numbers. To understand the scope. But the victims are not the numbers, they are our families. Being here you start to think about where the racist rhetoric can cause. This is the place where the road of hatred leads, where this road will inevitably end."
At the conclusion of the ceremony survived Nazi prisoners were awarded medals. Candles lit in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, were arranged in a straight row, symbolically called “a line under history”.