(27 Jan 2022) Holocaust survivors and politicians warned about the resurgence of antisemitism and Holocaust denial during the public commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day in the German Parliament on Thursday.
Speaking in the Bundestag, Holocaut survivor Inge Auerbacher said she had seen the "cancer" of antisemitism "reawakened".
"Hatred of Jews is commonplace again in many countries in the world, including Germany," Auerbacher said, adding: "This sickness must be healed as quickly as possible."
Commemorations are taking place amid a rise of antisemitism which gained traction during lockdowns as the pandemic exacerbated hatred online.
Bundestag President Baerbel Bas said antisemitism was not just found on the "extreme fringe" but was a "problem of our society".
Israeli Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy broke down in tears while reciting the Jewish mourner's prayer from a book which belonged to a German Jewish boy who celebrated his bar mitzvah on the eve of Kristallnacht.
Levy said Israel and Germany had gone through "an exceptional journey on the way to reconciliation" and formed a "brave friendship".
The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in November 2005 establishing the annual commemoration, and chose Jan. 27 — the day that Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, many International Holocaust Remembrance Day events were being held online this year again.
A small ceremony, however, was to take place at the site of the former Auschwitz death camp, where World War II Nazi German forces killed 1.1 million people in occupied Poland. The memorial site was closed earlier in the pandemic but reopened in June.
In all, about 6 million European Jews and millions of other people were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust. Some 1.5 million were children.
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