Auschwitz concentration camp

A former Nazi death camp officer dubbed the ?bookkeeper of Auschwitz? went on trial in Germany on April 21, with almost 70 Holocaust survivors and victims? relatives at the court.

Jewish teenager Anne Frank died in a Nazi concentration camp at least a month earlier than her official date of death, a new study said on March 31.
      
"New research... has shed fresh light on the last days of Anne Frank and her sister Margot," the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam said on Tuesday, until now her official death date.
      

By Harry van Versendaal

A large number of Greeks have limited awareness of the Holocaust or even hold anti-Semitic views, according to a new survey which traces the roots of attitudes to a strong sense of victimization among the public.

THESSALONIKI - Residents of Greeces second-largest city on Sunday placed flowers on train tracks and inside old cattle wagons in solemn remembrance of nearly 50,000 local Jews who were transported to Nazi death camps during World War II.

A crowd of 2,000 people gathered at Freedom Square, Thessaloniki, to commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the deportation of 56,000 Greek Sephardic Jews. They solemnly marched from the square to the city's old railway station where the first of 18 trains departed for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex on March 15, 1943.

The first train from Greece to Auschwitz Concentration Camp left Greece with 2,800 Jews on board on March 15, 1943. It was a one-way journey for the passengers on the steam engine, LV 964, that day. To commemorate the event 72 years owards, the train will return to the old station of Thessaloniki at 11.30 a.m. on March 15.

Visitors to the Tresnja children's theatre in Zagreb will have an opportunity on Friday to see the keenly awaited premiere of "Anne Frank", a play based on the real story of a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Holland who kept a secret diary.

Frank wrote the diary between June 1942 and August 1944 while her family was hiding in an attic in Amsterdam.

This week, Jan. 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz exterminatiom camp by Soviet soldiers. It was also a historic day for Turkey since for the first time its capital, Ankara, hosted a Holocaust commemoration ceremony.

"It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."

BELGRADE/AUSCHWITZ/VIENNA - On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp, officials of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on Tuesday highlighted the importance for societies to oppose the contemporary challenges of anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of intolerance.