Ceremony held in Austrian parliament in honor of Holocaust victims
By APWednesday, May 5, 2010
Austria commemorates Holocaust victims
VIENNA — Austrian government officials have honored Holocaust victims during a special ceremony in parliament.
The commemoration coincided with the anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp on May 5, 1945 and featured speeches and a video about a youth project.
Barbara Prammer, president of the lower house of parliament, said right-wing extremism is an “open assault on human rights and democracy.”
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz survivor and former Polish foreign minister, also attended Wednesday’s solemn event and said in a speech quoted by the Austria Press Agency that “indifference is the greatest sin.”
The Nazis shot, gassed, beat or worked to death about half the 200,000 inmates in Mauthausen’s main camp or its affiliates.
