By
The Associated Press
LONDON - Europe recalled one of its darkest eras Saturday as ceremonies from London to Lithuania marked the 56th anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp's liberation.
Britain and Italy held their first-ever Holocaust memorial days, while survivors, spiritual leaders and politicians across the continent pledged to remember a grim historical lesson about the consequences of intolerance.
"Not everyone who survived has the strength to share," said Auschwitz survivor Hedi Fried, speaking at a forum in Stockholm, Sweden. "We who can have an extra obligation. We owe it to our murdered parents, the six million Jews, 500,000 Gypsies and countless homosexuals, Russians and Poles who died."
Britain's national Holocaust Memorial Day involved ceremonies across the country and a London service that honored Nazi victims as well as those of other 20th century genocides.
The guest list for the memorial at Westminster Central Hall in London included Prince Charles, Prime Minister Tony Blair, the archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster and Britain's chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. The ceremony included tributes to survivors of violence in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda.
In Germany, a recent rise in violent attacks on minorities gave added resonance to the annual Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism. Parliament President Wolfgang Thierse marked the day by issuing a warning about the dangers of neo-Nazism.
Germans must show "commitment to democracy and against raging right-wing extremism," he told DeutschlandRadio. "This isn't about remembrance without consequences."
Germany's commemorative events were centered around the site of the planned national Holocaust memorial, close to the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin. Flags flew at half staff on government buildings in the city, and anti-racism campaigners lit thousands of candles.
In Poland, about 1,000 Auschwitz survivors and relatives of victims gathered at the former death camp and marched along railroad tracks from the Birkenau gate in a tribute to the 1.5 million people who died there. Because the commemoration fell on the Jewish Sabbath, Jewish survivors did not attend, but young Poles, Germans and local officials laid wreaths at a crematorium that has been converted into a museum.
Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek told the participants in a letter that they were the "guardians of this tragic heritage of mankind."
Italy's first Holocaust Memorial Day included a ceremony in Milan organized by Italian unions and a moment of silence during evening soccer games. Padua, in northern Italy, honored Giorgio Perlasca, a butcher credited with saving more than 5,000 Italian Jews.
About 7,000 Jews were deported from Italy during the Holocaust, and 5,910 of them died. Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi acknowledged Italy's role in the genocide, calling Benito Mussolini's racial laws a betrayal of the country's founding principles.
"But numerous Italians knew how to further the demands of their conscience against the violence of the dictator," he said.
Six million Jews and five million others, including communists, homosexuals, gypsies and the mentally retarded, perished under the Nazi regime.
