Holocaust Remembrance Day

Holocaust Memorial, Berlin, GermanyOn January 27, Germany celebrates National Holocaust Remembrance Day. This date was not chosen by chance. On January 27, 1945, prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp were released, where about one and a half million Jews and members of other national minorities were killed by the Nazis.

On this day, mourning ceremonies are held throughout the country.

On the territory of the former concentration camp Buchenwald, former prisoners and officials lay wreaths on a memorial plaque, which constantly maintains the temperature of the human body - about 37 degrees.

The memory of the victims of the Holocaust is dedicated to a special session of the Bundestag.

Bundestag Chairman Wolfgang Tirze said the Holocaust could never be fully understood. It is still unclear why most Germans displayed incredible human callousness during the Nazi era. “Those who had the courage to protest were in the minority,” Tirze said.

Spanish writer, former Minister of Culture and Buchenwald prisoner Jorge Semprun believes that “German regret for their own history is the basis of a new national consciousness and contributes to the strengthening of Germany’s role in the process of European unification.”

(c) Vladimir Guzman (BBC)