2008 Woodie Awards
Victims remembered at Auschwitz
Matthew Schofield ; Knight Ridder Newspapers
Issue date: 2/2/05 Section: News
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Thursday, standing on an ice-covered patch not far from where Mengele had mocked her coming end, she smiled.
"Just look at all of us," the 70-year-old resident of Terre Haute, Ind., said, sweeping a hand toward hundreds of fellow survivors, seated on plastic chairs and chatting 40 yards from the ruins of one of the notorious gas chambers.
"Here we are, 60 years after the Nazis were defeated, after almost all of the old Nazis are gone, and here we are, standing and celebrating 60 years of freedom."
In bitter cold and a blowing snowstorm that brought back memories of how hard it had been to survive in this place, thousands of survivors joined dozens of world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac, and Vice President Dick Cheney, to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
The anniversary, both a celebration of life and a remembrance of the dead, may well be the last such commemoration that will include a large number of the survivors. Kor wore a bright blue coat and bright red scarf because, she said, "Auschwitz is such a dreary place, not so bad now as then, but it needs some color."
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko lit a candle in honor of Ukrainians who died here--and for his father, an Auschwitz inmate who survived.
The ceremony began with the sound of train wheels screeching to a halt, a grim reminder that this was how the horrors of Auschwitz began for its victims.
"Most of them were sent to the gas chambers right upon arrival, their only guilt being that they were born Jews," noted former French Minister of Culture Simone Veil, an Auschwitz survivor, recalling how Mengele motioned new arrivals left or right as they stepped onto the "selection platform." The choice sent them either into a world of starvation, slave labor and struggle to survive, or to instant death.