Remembering Auschwitz

‘‘I was here naked as a young girl. I was 16. I am Israeli, I have a country, I have a flag. I have a President,’’ Merka Shevach, who had not been scheduled to speak, told the ceremony.

Up to 1.5 million people died in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau, set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland as its most efficient killing machine in the ‘‘Final Solution’’, the genocide of European Jews. Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the advancing Soviet Army, which released 7,000 prisoners left behind as the Germans withdrew.

A whistle, the sound of a stopping train and a door being flung open were played at the start of the ceremony in Birkenau, the camp’s main extermination centre, to symbolise the arrival of the Nazi victims. Most were gassed to death on arrival. Those selected for slave labour were stripped and shaved, an identity number tattooed on an arm.

World leaders, survivors and European royalty lit candles at a monument to the victims. Huge flames burned in the background. Gigantic searchlights lit up the grey winter sky behind the monument.

‘‘I want to say to all people around the world — this should not happen again,’’ said Anatoly Shapiro, the commander of the troops who first entered Auschwitz.

Among the more than 30 heads of state attending the ceremonies were the presidents of Israel, Germany and Russia, representing the victims, the perpetrators and the liberators.

‘‘The story of the camps reminds us that evil is real and must be called by its name and confronted,’’ said US Vice President Dick Cheney.

‘‘We fear anti-Semitism. We fear Holocaust denial, we fear a distorted approach by the youth of Europe,’’ said Israeli President Moshe Katsav.

President Jacques Chirac, the first French leader to acknowledge France’s complicity in the Holocaust, said the EU would stand united to counter anti-Semitism. ‘‘Evil is embodied in this place, tearing at our hearts and burning our consciences for eternity,’’ he said.

Set up in 1940 by the Nazis, Auschwitz was initially a labour camp for Polish prisoners but grew into a death factory for European Jews shipped there from around Europe. At its peak the camp could hold 400,000 people. More than one million Jews were killed but Gypsies, Poles and Russians also died. Hundreds were subjected to medical experiments by Nazi doctors testing theories of Aryan supremacy. —Reuters