World leaders gather in Israel for anniversary of Auschwitz
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier speaks during the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem on January 23, 2020. Steinmeier is the first German president to deliver a speech at Yad Vashem.
Dozens of world leaders gathered in Jerusalem on Thursday to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, amid a backdrop of rising anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States.
Israel has hailed the World Holocaust Forum at the Yad Vashem memorial center as the biggest international gathering in its history.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meeting on the sidelines of the conference with his Israeli counterpart Reuven Rivlin, said xenophobia and anti-Semitism must be opposed everywhere, regardless of who was behind the hatred.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the World Holocaust Forum marking 75 years since the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz at Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem on January 23, 2020.
“You just said that it’s not known where anti-Semitism ends,” Putin told Rivlin, referring to remarks the Israeli president made at their meeting. “Unfortunately we do know this — Auschwitz is its end-result.”
A global survey by the US-based Anti-Defamation League in November found that global anti-Semitic attitudes had increased and significantly so in Eastern and Central Europe.
It found that large percentages of people in many European countries think Jews talk too much about the Holocaust.
More than 1 million people, most of them Jews, were killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during World War II. Overall, 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.
The high-profile guest list for Thursday’s commemoration included US Vice President Mike Pence, French President Emmanuel Macron, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Britain’s Prince Charles.
However, the president of Poland, where the death camp was built by Nazi German occupiers, stayed away.
