Letter of the Survivors to the participants of the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day 2016
"Express your outrage at injustice and at the complacency of those who allow injustice to happen."
Auschwitz survivors pass on letter to the guests at the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland, where around 1.5 million young participants from around the globe were gathering in July 2016. The Auschwitz survivors are deeply moved by the young people’s great interest in visiting the Memorial to inform themselves about their fate and that of their families. As a sign of their recognition and affection towards the young people, the survivors are passing on the enclosed letter to them. It conveys a sum of their memories and their life experiences from Auschwitz to the present day. Read the letter
29. June 2015: Gröning trial – final speech of the defence
To be precise: tears. Never ending. Repeated tears, even after 71 years.
"We accuse for the suffering and loss, we accuse for our loneliness, we accuse for the cruellest of killing, we accuse for the many millions of missing kaddish recitals beside the deathbeds of our murdered relatives whose voices were silenced in Auschwitz. We accuse because of time, which heals no wounds, but instead burns them deeper into our souls. We accuse for the screams within ourselves, which we are still suppressing to this day so that we can be accepted as 'normal people'." Read more
“The Survivors’ Bequest”
Preserve Remembrance – Conserve authentic Places – Assume Responsibility
2009 – ten presidents of organizations of survivors of the holocaust signed a joint statement: the Survivors' Bequest. "We ask young people to carry on our struggle, against Nazi ideology and for a just, peaceful and tolerant world, a world that has no place for ant-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and right-wing extremism." Read more