Yad Vashem regrets 'unfortunate errors' in Holocaust videos
February 4, 2020
The World Holocaust Remembrance Center has admitted that film clips shown at the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation "included a number of inaccuracies." The ceremony had various world leaders in attendance.
Image: Getty Images/H. Zach
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Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, issued an apology on Monday, saying videos shown to numerous world leaders at a major commemorative event last month contained misleading information.
Dan Michman, the head of Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research, wrote in a statement that several short films about World War II that had aired during the World Holocaust Forum "included a number of inaccuracies that resulted in a partial and unbalanced presentation of the historical facts."
The forum, which took place in Jerusalem, marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi's Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex.
Michman added, "We apologize for the unfortunate errors in these short films, which do not represent Yad Vashem's approach to the historical issues portrayed."
Yad Vashem said the clips failed to mention Poland's division between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, nor did they acknowledge Nazi Germany's conquest of Western Europe a year later. The clips also showed incorrect borders of Poland and labeled concentration camps as extermination camp, the statement said.
Russia and Poland at historical loggerheads
The Janaury event was beset by controversy over conflicting narratives as Russia and Poland sought leverage over historical interpretations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to mitigate the Soviet Union's prewar pact with the Nazis to divide Poland and attempted to shift responsibility for World War II's outbreak on neighboring Poland.
Polish President Andrzej Duda boycotted the ceremony due to Putin's central role in combination with his own exclusion from the podium.
Commemorations of Auschwitz liberation take place around the world
January 27, 2020, marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. Events have taken place at the site and elsewhere to commemorate the horrors of the Holocaust.
Image: Reuters/K. Pempel
Returning to Auschwitz to remember
A solemn commemoration ceremony was held on the site of the former extermination camp, where some 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered by German Nazi forces between 1940 and 1945. Some 200 survivors of the camp attended, many coming from abroad. Some told of the atrocities they saw and suffered. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945.
Image: Reuters/K. Pempel
Carrying a burden of guilt
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was among those attending Monday's ceremony, accompanied by his wife, Elke Büdenbender. The gate to the camp seen behind him bears the words "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") — words that must have seemed like the bitterest mockery to those imprisoned at the camp.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Pedersen
Honoring the victims
Steinmeier laid a wreath at the "Death Wall," a reconstruction of the wall against which thousands of people were shot dead by SS men from 1941 to 1943. Poles, Russians and Roma, Sinti and homosexuals were also among those murdered at the camp under the Nazis' remorseless regime.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Pedersen
Widespread horrors
The former Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald near Weimar was also the site of a ceremony for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday. Buchenwald was one of the first and largest concentration camps in Germany. Prisoners included Jews, Poles, Russians, mentally ill and disabled people, political prisoners and prisoners of war. More than 56,000 people died at the camp.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Schlueter
Tiny memorials of horror
German Family Minister Franziska Giffey joined school pupils in Berlin to lay flowers on "Stolpersteine" ("stumbling stones"), small brass plaques set in the ground to commemorate individual people deported, persecuted or murdered under the Nazis. The project was initiated by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992. They are mostly located near the victim's last voluntary place of residency or work
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/E. Contini
A ghetto survivor
Frida Reizman survived a ghetto in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, that was set up by the Nazis. She lit a candle at a ceremony in Belarus in remembrance those who didn't make it. Some 800,000 Belarusian Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Those in the Minsk ghettos lived in extremely poor conditions and were often forced to work in factories. Many ended up being murdered in concentration camps.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/S. Grits
Commemoration in Sweden
Sweden's neutral status in World War II meant it could help rescue Jews from Norway and Denmark who were facing Nazi persecution. Almost the entire Danish Jewish community also found refuge in Sweden, and many Hungarian Jews were saved as well by diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. But the country did not always have a good record: In the 1930s, its immigration policy was not favorable to Jewish refugees.
