The event was held in the presence of the EU High Representatives for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Baroness Catherine Ashton, members of the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as Holocaust survivors, ambassadors and other invited guests. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, shared a personal testimony of how a visit with his family to Auschwitz changed his life and understanding of the obligation to preserve the memory of the Shoah. In his personal quest to preserve the memory of Auschwitz he found a lifelong partner and friend in then Polish Prime Minister Buzek, who provided help and support. In his keynote speech, Buzek shared his personal experience of growing up in occupied Poland, literally in the shadow of Auschwitz, and his commitment as a Pole and as the president of the European Parliament to preserve the memory of the Nazi death camps and his role in creating an international center to educate future generations. Several speakers talked about how remembrance cannot be a ceremony of only looking back in time but rather to learn the lessons from history as they apply to today”’s situation. How many lives could have been saved if the world community had acted decisively and in time? European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor, who shared about the Evian conference of 1938 where the international community failed to open up their borders to the Jews who wanted leave Nazi-Germany and occupied Austria, asked this question. He urged listeners not to make the same mistake today when Israel is threatened with nuclear extermination. Separate ceremonies were held elsewhere in Germany, including at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where elderly survivors gathered and a new memorial in the former factory of the company that made the crematoria ovens for the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz was the most notorious of the Nazi’s many death and concentration camps and the date of its liberation was chosen as International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations in 2005. Separate ceremonies were held elsewhere in Germany, including at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where elderly survivors gathered, and at a new memorial in the former factory of the company that made the crematoria ovens for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Thursday, Turkey was holding its first official commemorations on international Holocaust remembrance day.

People walk behind a red rose affixed to the main entrance on the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany during International Holocaust Remembrance Day. More than 250,000 people were held captive in the camp between 1937 and 1945, with more than 50,000 of them dying.

January 27 was chosen as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by UN’s General Assembly in 2005. It is the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust which resulted in the annihilation of 6 million European Jews and millions of others by the Nazi German regime. January 27 marks the International Holocaust Remembrance day and the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp by Soviet troops in 1945. It is an annual day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi regime. It was designated by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005 during the 42nd plenary session.

The General Assembly in 2005 designated Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual day to honor the victims of the Nazi era. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington was scheduled to hold a candle-lighting ceremony in its Hall of Remembrance. The Washington diplomatic community and Holocaust survivors were among those expected to attend, according to the museum. In recognition of that day, and to remember the victims of the Holocaust, January 27 was deemed International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD) by the United Nations in 2005”’the 60th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum informs. The U.N. not only created the day to commemorate the Holocaust victims, but also made a point that every nation represented by the U.N. should create programs that will educate others to prevent any genocide of this magnitude, and any other kind, of happening again. They also declared that any denial of the Holocaust will be rejected.

January 27 is the UN designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the day in 1945 when the Nazi death camp Auschwitz was liberated. OSWIECIM, Poland – The German and Polish presidents on Thursday urged global vigilance to prevent crimes against humanity as they marked international Holocaust remembrance day at the former Auschwitz death camp. The exhibit is housed in the former administrative building of the Topf & Sons company that collaborated with Hitler’s SS to design and construct special ovens to meet the demands of the death camps. It opens to the public on Thursday, the day of international Holocaust remembrance. Using original blueprints, letters from the Nazi SS, and other documents, the exhibit shows how a “normal” German company, based in the central city of Erfurt, knew and took pride in its role of designing a crucial part of the killing machinery.

A man stands in the exhibition ‘The Engineers of the ‘Final Solution’ Topf & Sons – Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens’ after a press conference in Erfurt, central Germany, on Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011. The memorial site and educational center to open this week on International Holocaust Remembrance Day documents the role played by a German maker of crematoria in the mass execution of Europe’s Jews and others. Hitler’s top men dreamed up the horrors of the Holocaust, but without the support of German engineers and industrialists like Topf & Sons, they would never have succeeded in murdering millions. Gathering held at Neve Salom synagogue in Istanbul; attended by members of the local Jewish community and the Turkish Foreign Ministry. Turkey held its first-ever state ceremony in memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators on Thursday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Turkey held its first official commemoration of the Holocaust on International Holocaust Remembrance Day as ”stanbul’s governor and other officials joined members of Turkey’s Jewish community to remember the victims of the Nazi era.

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova marks International Holocaust Commemoration Day by laying a wreath to Holocaust victims at the Paris Shoah Memorial on Wednesday. At the memorial, accompanied by her Deputy Director-General Getachew Engida (Ethiopia, center), Assistant Director General Eric Falt (France, second from left) and her diplomatic adviser Dr. Graciela Samuels (Israel, right), Bokova pledged to set a principle that ”’every UNESCO Director-General visit this Shoah Memorial each 27 January.”’ A native of Bulgaria, Bokova has often expressed pride at that country”’s protection of its Jewish community from deportation. The memorial”’s President, Eric de Rothschild (second from right), stressed the role of the UNESCO operational partnership in the promotion of Holocaust education and research and, since 2009, its cooperation in the organization of the International Remembrance Day events. (Memorial Director Jacques Fredj is at left.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the world on Wednesday to learn the lessons of the Holocaust and act against the Jewish state’s arch-foe Iran. Speaking to parliament ahead of international Holocaust Remembrance Day, he accused the “regime of the ayatollahs” of inciting a new “genocide” against the Jewish people. Israel regards Iran as its principal threat, after repeated predictions by its hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Jewish state’s demise. U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday joined a list of other world leaders in marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “I join people here at home, in Israel, and around the world in commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we mark one of the darkest, most destructive periods in human history,” he said.

In an address to Israel’s Knesset marking International Holocaust Day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it is “obvious” that global anti-Semitism is “renewing and expanding.” “If anyone thought that anti-Semitism stopped after World War II and the Holocaust, it is now evident that it was only a hiatus,” he said, calling on the world to fight the scourge globally. “It is not only a threat against us because it always begins with the Jews but never ends with the Jews,” Netanyahu said. “The hatred of Jews kindles an overall fire, and I expect that on this day, when I applaud the world for marking the most heinous crime in world history and the history of our people which was perpetrated against our people — I hope others will also learn the lesson.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday called for building “a more peaceful, just and tolerant world” in honor of the survivors of and those who perished in the Holocaust. He described the Holocaust in the Second World War as “one of the darkest, most destructive periods in human history,” in which six million Jews and millions of other people were murdered by the Nazis. Christian clerics also prayed at a gathering that included the Polish and German presidents, diplomats and Holocaust survivors. Former camp inmates, many moving tentatively with canes, wore blue-and-white striped scarves that evoked the look of the prisoner garb they once wore. Earlier, Germany’s President Christian Wulff stood in silence before a gray concrete wall where Nazis executed Polish resistance members at Auschwitz, one gesture among many Thursday symbolizing his nation’s remorse for the suffering inflicted during World War II. Wulff and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski laid wreaths at the wall and walked with former camp inmates beneath the entrance gate bearing the inscription “Arbeit Macht Frei” ”’ or “Work Sets You Free” ”’ a notorious slogan used by the Nazis in camps where they subjected their victims to slave labor, torture and murder. OSWIECIM, Poland – Germany’s president said Thursday that each generation must grapple anew with the crimes of the Nazi era, as German and Polish leaders and Holocaust survivors prepared for ceremonies marking the 66th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp’s liberation. German President Christian Wulff and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski joined survivors at the site of the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp in Poland today for Holocaust commemorations.

The date was picked to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of notorious death camp Auschwitz by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945. Ambassador Ertan Tezg”r, who participated in the ceremony on behalf of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, said in his speech at ”stanbul’s biggest synagogue, Neve ”alom, that Turkey is following a principled approach against racism. “Turkey will follow a principled approach regarding the remembrance of the Jewish Holocaust and learn lessons from it as it fights animosity toward foreigners, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism,” he was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency. He also said that Ya”ar Yak””, chairman of the EU Harmonization Committee in Parliament and former foreign minister, will attend a ceremony on Feb. 1 in Auschwitz, Poland, on behalf of President Abdullah G”l, with Turkey’s chief EU negotiator, Egemen Ba”””. On display in the exhibit are 701 urns made by the company that were delivered to Buchenwald. The remains they contained were buried in the camp before the urns went on display. Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman at the Auschwitz state museum in Poland, said such memorials are an important part of Holocaust remembrance because they show the role played by educated and skilled people far from the death camps. “We, of course, commemorate the victims, but we must also take into consideration the group of perpetrators ”’ that there were people who engaged their knowledge, their time, their education, in order to make it work,” Sawicki said. Mr Weisz was speaking on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945, which Germany has marked since 1996 with official memorial ceremonies for Holocaust victims. It was the first time a Roma was the keynote speaker at the commemoration, which was also attended by chancellor Angela Merkel. Europe’s Roma will be represented for the first time at Germany’s official Holocaust memorial ceremony, almost seven decades after up to half a million members of the community were exterminated in Nazi death camps. Turkey annually issues messages denouncing the deaths of Jews, Gypsies and others by Nazi Germany on Holocaust remembrance day, but Thursday’s ceremony marks the first official Holocaust memorial in predominantly Muslim Turkey. Zoni Weisz spoke on Thursday during the commemoration of Nazi victims in front of the Bundestag. The first Roma guest of honor Germany’s official Holocaust remembrance day ceremony has stated his people now face new threats. BERLIN (Reuters) – The first Sinti and Roma keynote speaker at Germany’s Holocaust remembrance day told parliament on Thursday the mass murder of Roma during the Nazi era was the “forgotten Holocaust” as they continue to suffer across Europe. Zoni Weisz, 73, was only seven years old when he was separated from his family and fled the German transports from the Netherlands to Auschwitz. He was saved by the grace of a policeman and spent the war in hiding. His parents and siblings were murdered in Auschwitz.

Now called the” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, it looks much as it did during the war years, where more than one million Jews were cycled through and murdered. On this anniversary,” World Holocaust Remembrance Day, the”Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation is kicking off ” Intervene Now!,” a campaign to unite the world in protecting and preserving Auschwitz to honor the memory of those who died there.

While January 27 is recognized by many countries as a day of remembrance for the Holocaust victims, other dates are used across the world to honor them, including Israel, which holds commemorating ceremonies in April. Bulgaria marks its Holocaust Remembrance Day on March 10, a day dedicated to the rescue of approximately 50 000 Bulgarian Jews 65 years ago.

On international Holocaust Remembrance Day we commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. This date is less than three years before the international community overwhelmingly endorsed the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty, through UN General Assembly Resolution 181, in our ancient homeland. International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked around the world on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Soviet army in 1945. The international Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 marks the day Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1945. Thursday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day as designated by the UN in November 2005. This day was chosen because it is the date on which the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated by the Red Army.

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation Council and a former prisoner at the camp, said the camp needed to be preserved as a permanent reminder to future generations. “The barracks, the barbed wire, and the ruins of the crematoria and gas chambers are the best guardian of memory; through their silent presence they ensure that nobody can ever deny that the worst of the 20th century?s crimes actually occurred,” he said. “By ensuring the preservation of the. site and maintaining the testimonies of the past, we are, in fact, taking care of the future,” he added in comments published on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As Elie Wiesel put it, ”’Cold-blooded murder and culture did not exclude each other. If the Holocaust proved anything, it is that a person can both love poems and kill children”’. In acting upon the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, states should commit themselves to implementing the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, which concluded: ”’We share a commitment to encourage the study of the Holocaust in all its dimensions”’ a commitment to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and to honor those who stood against it”’ a commitment to throw light on the still obscured shadows of the Holocaust”’ a commitment to plant the seeds of a better future amidst the soil of a bitter past”’ a commitment”’ to remember the victims who perished, respect the survivors still with us, and reaffirm humanity”’s common aspiration for mutual understanding and justice.”’ MONTREAL – A ceremony to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day was held in Montreal on Thursday evening, and the enduring message from the survivors and others in attendance is just how easy it is to forget the horrors of the past. The ceremony at Auschwitz is one of several being held across the world on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the global day of commemoration established by the United Nations in 2005.

Today marks the sixty-sixth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, with commemorations across the globe in observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Sixty-six years ago Auschwitz stopped functioning. This is commemorated around the world as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rivlin lashed out at the world for not taking action against Iran. ”’Six years after the world established International Holocaust Remembrance Day and vowed to remember ”’ the serpent of destruction again raises its head,”’ he said. ”’It turns out that in complete contrast to the hopes of the Zionist movement, an old anti-Semitism is emerging again,”’ he continued. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked for the fifth year running.

The European Parliament honored the victims of the Holocaust this week with the annual International Holocaust Remembrance day event on Tuesday night in Brussels.

President of the German Constitutional Court Andreas Vosskuhle (R-L) German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President of the Bundesstag Norbert Lammert, Zoni Weisz representative of German head of the central council of the Sinti and Roma and President of the Upper House of Parliament Bundesrat Hannelore Kraft attend a commemoration service for the victims of national socialism, on International Holocaust Memorial Day, at the Reichstag building, seat of the German lower house of Parliament Bundestag, in Berlin, January 27, 2011. Germany is marking Holocaust memorial day, 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. This year, Europe’s Roma are being represented for the first time. Nazi Germany opened Auschwitz as a concentration camp in the summer of 1940 after it invaded and occupied Poland, and its first prisoners were Poles. Because of its location in the heart of Europe, Germany soon turned it into a center for implementing the “Final Solution,” the plan to kill Europe’s Jews. By the time of its liberation, at least 1.1 million people had died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau or from starvation, disease and forced labor. WARSAW – Trustees at the Auschwitz museum marked the 66th anniversary of its liberation Thursday by launching a Facebook drive to help raise 120 million euros to preserve the site of the Nazi death camp. In a message on its Facebook page, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation said it hoped to draw 120 million euros ($164mn) donations from “individuals, organisations and governments around the world” to protect the site in Poland where an estimated 1.1 people were slaughtered during World War II. A handful of elderly camp survivors and young Germans and Poles also gathered in Oswiecim, southern Poland, for ceremonies marking 66 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex where German Nazis killed more than a million people during World War II.

Survivors of the German Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau attend ceremonies at the camp in Poland on Thursday to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the camp’s liberation. Warsaw – Poland’s and Germany’s presidents were set Thursday to mark the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz with ceremonies in southern Poland.

Dutch born Zoni Weisz, a Roma Holocaust survivor, will address Germany’s Bundestag on Thursday, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. During the ceremony held in the Bundestag, Dutch born Zoni Weisz, a Roma Holocaust survivor, addressed the parliamentary chamber. The son of a music shop owner, Mr Weisz was just seven when his family were deported from the Netherlands to Auschwitz. He escaped the Nazi raid in his hometown with the help of a policeman, but his parents, sisters and younger brother were all murdered at the death camp. Berlin – A gypsy survivor of the Holocaust recalled as guest speaker in the German parliament Thursday how his parents and siblings were dragged away by the Nazis in the Netherlands and taken to the Auschwitz death camp to be killed.

In Berlin, the German parliament convened Thursday for a special session commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. Parliamentary President Norbert Lammert reminded lawmakers it is the duty of later generations to keep alive the memory of those murdered by the Nazis. For the first time, a survivor representing Sinti and Roma, or Gypsies, addressed the body, reminding lawmakers of what he called the “forgotten Holocaust” against 500,000 of his people. For the first time, a survivor representing Gypsies addressed the body. Zoni Weisz reminded lawmakers of what he called the “forgotten Holocaust” against 500,000 of his people. Romani Rose, chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, also recalled the suffering of his people during the events at Auschwitz, noting that “practically every family from our minority has been affected by the Holocaust.” He also warned that right-wing hatred is again killing Roma, today Europe’s largest ethnic minority, noting that 11 Hungarian Roma have been killed since 2008 by neo-Nazis in “a new dimension of violence against our minority.”

Tears welled up in the eyes of many parliamentarians as Zoni Weisz, 73, spoke on Holocaust Day of the family’s ‘deportation’ in May 1944 and deaths, and his own escape thanks to a friendly Dutch policeman. He survived the rest of the Second World War in hiding. He was the first gypsy to give the keynote address after many years where Jewish survivors took the role at the Berlin ceremony. ‘The genocide of the Sinti and Roma remains a forgotten Holocaust to this day,’ he said. The day aims to remind the world not only of the events leading up to and during World War II, but of subsequent genocides too. This year, the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day was Untold Stories. A national event will take place in London later today, bringing together survivors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, as well as politicians, young people, religious leaders and dignitaries. The theme of this year’s HMD is “untold stories” inspired by the fact that there are millions of stories which will never be told because lives and communities were wiped out in genocide. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust hopes that by listening to the stories that have been told, people will better understand those untold stories, using the lessons learnt as an inspiration. The victims and survivors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides are being remembered at hundreds of events across the UK today as part of Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) 2011.

A Lincolnshire arts venue is commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day 2011 with a series of talks and readings. On Wednesday Holocaust survivor Hanneke Dye shared her account of the Holocaust with local school children. She told them what it was like being brought up in Nazi occupied Holland as a Jewish child.

A decade ago 27 January was designated Holocaust Memorial Day. This date was chosen because on 27 January 1945 Soviet soldiers liberated the first Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. More recent genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur are also remembered on this date. The anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on 27 January 1945 is been marked by Holocaust Memorial Day. Holocaust Memorial Day is an annual event and takes place on the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau – the largest Nazi Concentration Camp.

People gathered at the Holocaust Memorial Centre on Cote Ste-Catherine to share stories and listen to readings of letters sent home to Canada from World War II. One of those letters was written on April 30, 1945 by a Jewish Canadian soldier named Saul Stein, telling stories of what he witnessed as the Allied forces made their way across Germany liberating concentration camps. The largest concentration camp was Auschwitz, located in Poland, where more than one million people were killed. According to www.holocaustforgotten.com, an estimated 11 million men, women, and children were killed during the Holocaust, six million of them being Jewish. Last year, a record 1.4 million people came from around the world. To the delight of officials, most of them were young people and students. Kastelaniec explained that he often sees groups of young people as they begin their tours. Sometimes they’re making jokes. “But after three hours of visiting, many of them are very, very reflective,” he says. “It’s a very strong experience.” As the numbers of Auschwitz survivors dwindle, there’s more need than ever to preserve the space that haunted them. “This generation is passing away,” Kastelaniec says. Noah Flug is one such witness. Now 86, he was in the concentration camp at the age of 19. From his home in Israel, he told Tonic proudly, “I was a prisoner in”Auschwitz”and I am now president of the International Auschwitz Committee.”

Gogol stood in that fearful place and played ”’ Hatikva.”’ It was not only his anthem but his song of triumph over the Nazis. He died only a few weeks later. A graphic artist and animator, poet, author and playwright, Bau for many years used his talents to tell his story. Part of his story was also told in Steven Spielberg”’s Academy Award winning film Schindler”’s List. It was at the Plaszow concentration camp that Bau met and secretly married Rebecca Tennenbaum. Their marriage was featured in the film. Bau was subsequently transferred to the Gross Rosen concentration camp and from there to Oskar Schindler”’s camp, where he stayed till the end of the war. Rebecca was sent to Auschwitz, where three times she managed to evade the gas chambers. After the war, the two were reunited and in 1950 they came here with an infant daughter. Another daughter was born to them. After Bau died in 2002, his daughters Cilla and Hadassa turned his apartment at 9 Rehov Berdichevski, Tel Aviv, into a museum. “Only two survived.” Fishman and his family lived in Hungary and were taken by the Nazis in 1944 when he was 17. They were sent to Auschwitz, where the notorious Dr. Joseph Mengele selected who would live and who would die. “My father and my little kid brother, I didn’t even have a chance to say hello, say goodbye to them or something,” he said. While most of his family was murdered, Fishman spent the next year in slave labour. “I grew up practically in the concentration camp and the slave labour camp where we were beaten if we stopped for a couple of minutes for rest,” he recalled. He was later moved to the Bergen-Belsen camp where he was liberated at the war’s end. Fishman says his recollections are vivid. Memories of events during childhood, he says, are usually the strongest.

Topf & Sons first began supplying Hitler’s SS with corpse incineration ovens in 1939 for use in the Buchenwald, Flossenbuerg and Dachau concentration camps. Two years later, they applied for a patent for a “continuous-operation corpse incineration oven for mass use,” knowing the Nazis would use the ovens to dispose of corpses of Jews, Gypsies and others murdered en masse in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Once inside, pictures of the Nazi-era production site, the company’s logo and other artifacts greet visitors as they make their way to the exhibit, where blueprints showing the proportions of pipes and bricks of an oven are displayed in an otherwise bare room. Hitler could not be appeased.”’ The Holocaust was preceded by harsh policies against the Jews, including their relegation to ghettoes and restrictions on their freedoms and rights. The Nazis began rounding up the Jews in late 1941, and then sending them to concentration camps, which were nearly all located in German-occupied Poland.

Adolf Hitler himself was explicit enough to call the Arabs “painted half-apes, who want to feel the whip.” (Quotes are from Bernard Lewis, “Semites & Anti-Semites.”) Perhaps Mr. Ahmadinejad of Iran might wish to consider such facts about the Nazis, before hosting a Holocaust-denial conference next time – a denial which whitewashes the crimes of one of the most evil cadre in human history. At the end of the day, no matter how much we protest the Israeli government for its decades-long policies of occupation and intimidation that has wronged the Palestinian people, we have to acknowledge the tragedy of the Holocaust. Its victims were innocent people who had no crime other than being Jews. And, in the face of such genocidal racism, we should all stand by the Jews. The fact that Israel often uses the Holocaust to shield itself against all criticism, including the most legitimate ones, has created a temptation to overlook or sometimes even deny the Holocaust. That is all too wrong. Quite the contrary, if Muslim societies want to have a higher moral ground on the Palestinian cause, they should in fact begin by being fair to the Jewish people, which should begin by respecting the victims in their history. Another disturbing fact within some Islamic circles – the radical or bigoted ones, of course – is a sort of sympathy for the Nazis since they “gave a lesson to the Jews.” This is not only terribly immoral. It is also fully stupid and ignorant. The international community had, through the Mandate for Palestine in 1922, recognized the ”’historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine”’ in order to reconstitute ”’their national home.”’ While there is little basis for arguing that the Jewish people”’s right to sovereignty in its historic homeland is based solely on the Holocaust, there is a clear basis for the assertion that the Holocaust would not have happened were Jewish sovereignty already existent at the time. Israel”’s Declaration of Independence recalls the Holocaust as ”’another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by reestablishing in Eretz Yisrael the Jewish state, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew, and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.”’ People will often hold on tighter to a misconception when presented with facts. As an American Jew, I see that most American Jews refuse to acknowledge that the country that they believe is their homeland is oppressing and abusing the human rights of Palestinians, even when they are shown irrefutable evidence, and even when they see the situation with their own eyes. Safety Many American Jews feel that Israel’s existence as a Jewish state gives them the security that when the next Holocaust comes, they will have a refuge. On this topic, Meyer says the Holocaust is being manipulated. The Israeli government “manipulate the Holocaust for their political aims. In the long-run the country is destructing itself this way by inducing their Jewish citizens to become paranoid,” he said in a 2009 interview with Electronic Intifada. It is not only the Jewish Israelis who become paranoid. Perhaps Dr. Meyer will shed some light on this puzzle when he speaks February 8 at 7:00 pm in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall at Macalester College on the topic “Never Again for Anyone.” Hajo Meyer, after being interned for about the same amount of time in Auschwitz, and becoming a physicist, a violinist, and author, speaks out against the ethnic-based laws, arbitrary arrests and torture, confiscation of land, home