European leaders remember the Holocaust
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-28 08:56

European leaders remembered the Holocaust on Friday, the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, with commemorations.

Several leaders used the occasion to reject Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Israel should be wiped off the map and his description of the Holocaust — the murder of 6 million Jews by the forces of German dictator Adolf Hitler — as a "myth."

On a clear, cold day at Auschwitz, Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz placed a wreath and bowed his head at the foot of the main memorial in honor of the some 1.5 million people who died at the Nazi-run camp.

A person walks past a guard tower at the former Nazi-run Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Brzezinka, Poland, on Friday, Jan. 27, 2006. [AP]

The Holocaust "is a crime that tarnishes human history," Marcinkiewicz said. "Let it be a warning today and for the future."

Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and the neighboring Birkenau camp on Jan. 27, 1945, as World War II neared its end. Some 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, died there from gassing, starvation, exhaustion, beatings and disease. Other victims included Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and political opponents of the Nazis.

Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar performed a remembrance prayer at a commemoration event at the Moscow Writers' House. He lamented that extremist sentiments were gaining popularity around the world, including in Russia, where a knife attack earlier this month on worshippers at a Moscow synagogue left eight people wounded.

"Preachers of extremist views must once and for all be excluded from the political and social life of the country," Lazar said.

In Prague, Auschwitz survivor Felix Kolmor urged people to look ahead as well as back. "Let's not forget that memories of our suffering have to also be a point of departure for creating a better future," said Kolmer, 83.

Germany's parliamentary president Norbert Lammert urged that the lessons of the Holocaust continue to influence national policy, referring to recent remarks by Ahmadinejad in warning of the danger of anti-Semitism.

Lammert stressed that the need to commemorate the millions of Jews and others murdered by the Nazis will not diminish with time.

"The past weeks have shown us how much not only we Germans need this remembrance day," Lammert said at a special session of parliament. "With dismay we have had to note that today, even presidents insist on describing the Holocaust as a fairy tale and go so far as to make anti-Semitic remarks."

At the United Nations, Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman issued a warning.

"We sound an alarm, a call to arms and a wake-up call to the world. A world in which an extreme and evil regime denies the Holocaust, while preparing the next one," Gillerman said.