- Title: POLAND: YOUNG ISRAELI JEWS VISIT THE FORMER NAZI HOLOCAUST CAMP OF AUSCHWITZ
- Date: 22nd April 1998
- Summary: (RTV - NO ACCESS POLAND) KRACOW, POLAND (APRIL 22, 1998) 1. LV/ GV JEWISH STUDENTS WANDERING ROUND JEWISH AREA OF OLD TOWN (3 SHOTS) 0.23 2. GV STUDENTS PASSING SYNAGOGUE 0.29 3. GV STUDENTS IN SYNAGOGUE/ GUIDE EXPLAINING HISTORY OF BUILDING (2 SHOTS) 0.40 4. GV STUDENTS WALKING IN JEWISH GRAVEYARD /MAN WEARING SKULL CAP/ GROUP OF STUDENT
- Embargoed: 7th May 1998 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: KRACOW AND AUSCHWITZ, POLAND
- City:
- Country: Poland
- Reuters ID: LVABI9YGS9YGU4MR3TO8XEDL15VP
- Story Text: Young Jews have visited the former Nazi camp of Auschwitz where their Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lead them in a memorial march on Thursday.Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek has urged Poles to show respect for the march, aimed to educate and protest claims the Holocaust never happened.
Young jews prepared on Wednesday (April 22) for a annual march held to educate them about the Holocaust by allowing them to see sites and witnesses.
Some Catholics and rightists in the region near the World War Two camp of Auschwitz are angry at Jewish calls for a large cross next to Auschwitz to be moved from the site where German invaders murdered up to 1.5 million people, the vast majority Jews.
Some groups may try to hold prayers or even protests in defence of the cross on the day Netanyahu attends the "March of the Living" of about 7,000 Jewish youths and 1,000 survivors of the Holocaust at the complex, now a museum in south Poland.The march has been held over the last 10 years.
"One must do everything to avoid them because this is a very important act and a march which will be observed live by dozens of television stations in the world," said Buzek on national radio.
Security measures had been taken to safeguard decorum.
The Israeli organisers of the "March of the Living" say its chief aim is to disprove and protest against spreading claims in Europe that the Holocaust never happened.
The wartime murder of six million Jews gave impetus to the founding of the State of Israel, now marking its 50th anniversary as a homeland and haven for the scattered people.
The march participants will draw the link by flying on to ceremonies there.
It is the first time that an Israeli prime minister will join the march.
The column, also guarded by Israeli security, will do the three-km (two-mile) march from Auschwitz to adjacent Birkenau, where most of the dead including many thousands of little children were gassed and burned in vast crematoria.
Auschwitz has repeatedly been a focus of controversy between some Poles and Jews over how to commemorate the victims of Nazi crimes and the Holocaust.
Polish governments since the 1989 fall of communism have increasingly worked to heal strained relations with the Jewish diaspora, both out of conviction and also because disputes over Auschwitz and other issues have harmed Poland's image abroad.
The United States Senate is about to vote on approving Poland's hard-sought entry to NATO and Polish officials say they fear any disruption of the march might harm this goal, either unwittingly or through some deliberate provocation.
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