Germany marks Holocaust Day with call for stand against neo-Nazis

Jan 27, 2012, 20:55 GMT

Berlin/Warsaw - The German parliament marked Holocaust Memorial Day Friday with a call for the nation's citizens to make a stand against the threat posed by the extreme right.

'There are people who set an example and show courage,' said Norbert Lammert, the president of parliament's lower house, the Bundestag.

His comments follow a move to set up parliamentary enquiries into a series of murders of foreigners in Germany by an underground Nazi gang.

Events commemorating Holocaust Day, which marks the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945, are held around the world each year.

In a moving speech to parliament, the prominent Polish-born German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki reminded parliamentarians of the systematic torture and organized mass murder of European Jews launched by Germany under Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

The 91-year-old Reich-Ranicki grew up in a Jewish family and later survived the Warsaw Ghetto.

'They had only one goal, they had only one purpose - death,' he said referring to Nazi claims that they were simply resettling Jews.

This year's Holocaust Day followed the publication this week of a survey showing 20 per cent of Germans had anti-Semitic feelings. 'That is 20 per cent too many in Germany,' Lammert said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and the nation's president, Christian Wulff also joined the ceremony in parliament.

Meanwhile, Poland marked the 67th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp with a holy mass for the victims at a church in Oswiecim, the town where the concentration camp was located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Some 30 survivors of the camp took part in the mass.

Oswiecim city officials paid tribute to the victims by laying wreaths and flowers at the site of the former death camp, which is currently a state-run museum.

'Auschwitz is a warning ... against hate in the private and public sphere, against racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia,' said Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski in a statement.

Auschwitz will 'always touch the conscience of every thinking and sensitive person ... It will remain a wound on the soul of Europe and the world,' Komorowski wrote.