Germany mourns Holocaust dead, to open new museum

Jan 27, 2011, 10:18 GMT

Berlin - Germany's parliament mourned the victims of the Holocaust Thursday, with the speaker, Norbert Lammert, saying the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany must never be forgotten.

Every year on Holocaust Day, a survivor of the genocide addresses the German parliament. This year's speaker was for the first time to be a gypsy leader.

Zoni Weisz, 73, lost his parents and siblings. They were murdered in Auschwitz. He survived hidden in the Netherlands.

Historians estimate the Nazis murdered up to 500,000 Sinti and Roma during their rule, while between 5 million and 6 million Jews lost their lives. Disabled people and political and religious dissidents were also among the groups systematically killed.

Later in the day, Germany was to add to its dozens of monuments and museums marking the years of persecution with a new museum in the eastern city of Erfurt in the building where the Auschwitz death camp crematorium was designed by a private contractor.

German President Christian Wulff was in Poland to attend ceremonies on the site of Auschwitz itself.

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