World pauses to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day

[AP Photo]

Holocaust survivors, politicians and regular people commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day yesterday [Macau time], gathering at somber events across Europe and beyond to reflect on Nazi Germany’s killing of millions of people.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed each year on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the Nazi German death camps. The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing the day as an annual commemoration. “The attempt, carried out by Nazi Germany, to erase the Jews from the face of Europe encapsulates, in an emblematic way, all the evil that human beings are capable of committing when they allow themselves to be infected — out of superficiality, indifference, cowardice, or self-interest — by the virus of hatred, racism, and oppression,” Italian President Sergio Mattarella said in a gathering with survivors in Rome.

At Auschwitz, located in an area of southern Poland which was under German occupation during World War II, Polish President Karol Nawrocki joined survivors for a remembrance ceremony that ended with Jewish and Christian clergy reciting prayers.

Bernard Offen, a 96-year-old survivor told participants that in today’s world he sees “signs I know too well.”