OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — Holocaust survivors seeing their grandchildren facing the hatred that nearly killed them is a source of shame for the world, World Jewish Congress leader Ronald Lauder said at Auschwitz.
Lauder spoke Monday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland.
Dozens of world leaders attended the event at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum near Krakow, including Polish President Andrjez Duda, who was the only politician to speak. He vowed to “always nurture the memory of and guard the truth about what happened here.”
Other leaders included Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.
Several survivors also spoke, including Batsheva Dagan, 94, who lives in Israel but was born in Poland.
“The thought of revenge became a source of strength allowing to endure longs days and nights of inhumane suffering,” she said of the prisoners at concentration camps.
Lauder in his speech said that following the Holocaust, “everyone wanted to distance themselves as much as possible from the horrors” of Auschwitz. “But in recent years, I’ve seen something I never thought I’d see in the spread of anti-Semitism.”
He also condemned what he called the “shameful and constant fixation on Israel at the United Nations,” which he said has passed 202 resolutions condemning individuals nations since 2013, of which 163 focused on Israel.
“Anti-Zionism is nothing but anti-Semitism,” he added, prompting many survivors to applaud. Israel’s haters, he said, “speak of it as anti-Semites spoke before about Jews.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
