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Over 140 Members Parliament, and Members of the European Parliament from 30 countries as well as members of the Israeli Knesset, had an emotional visit in the extermination camp on the day of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. European Friends of Israel (EFI), an organisation whose objective is to foster dialogue and a deeper understanding between Europe and Israel, organised the visit for the third consecutive year. In 2005, the United Nations declared January 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Sixty-five years down the road from the day when the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp took place in 1945 signalling an end to the campaign of systematic murder which saw the extermination of over six million Jews and millions of other innocent citizens of Europe. Romanian MEP Dancila says “It was very impressive to see the biggest concentration camp where about 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were exterminated. This grim place is terrifying”. “It is very important to preserve the memories of the victims and to teach the young generations this shameful and sad part of history so that it will happen never again”, she adds. Gunnar Hokmark, EFI Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the European People’s Party group at the European Parliament, said in a message to the participants, “understanding our past, remembering the Holocaust is so important to understanding each other today and working together in the future. And so for the past years, on the occasion of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, EFI has led the delegation of Parliamentarians from around Europe to Auschwitz-Birkenau Camps”. A total of 1.3 million people perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau --- 1.1 million of them Jews from across occupied Europe -- mostly killed in gas chambers but also from shooting, hanging, starvation, disease, slave labour and pseudo-medical experiments. Carrying European and Israeli flags, the delegation lit six candles in memory of the six million Jews from across Europe who were exterminated in the Holocaust. "We are landing on another planet" said Mr. David Brin, survivor of the Holocaust, “while we were reaching the camps”. Spanish MEP Garriga Polledo observes: “Actually this planet was governed by people who did not belong to the human race. I do believe that Auschwitz is a lesson to Europe in terms of solidarity, reconciliation and forgiveness”. “The EFI mission to Auschwitz was a grim, solemn and moving occasion in the bitter cold of a Polish winter”, says Dr. Charles Tannock, British Member of the European Parliament. “The phrase 'whoever forgets the past is condemned to repeat it' sprang to mind, being a reason why all Western Leaders should visit the location of man's greatest inhumanity to main in the last century - yet impunity still prevails for those criminals behind these atrocities and in the same way that in the past the vast bulk of those Nazis and collaborators who executed the Holocaust got away unpunished. It's extraordinary that in our current timeframe enormous barbarities – albeit not on the scale of the Holocaust – still occur from the genocide of Darfur, Cambodia and Bosnia to the insanity of Rwanda. This is something the World must address for the future”, Mr Tannock adds. Alice Graham |
