KZ exemption ceremony in Mauthausen-Diepresse.com

20,000 visitors from all over the world thought of the victim of the Mauthausen concentration camp on Sunday, including the Spanish royal couple Felipe VI. and Letiziathe Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani and Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen and a large part of the federal government. Van der Bellen warned not to look away. The President of the Israelite Culture Community (IKG) Vienna, Oskar Germanscourge Iran and that Hamas For anti -Semitism.

Traditionally, delegations from all over the world come to Mauthausen for the liberation ceremony and lay down wreaths on the former Appeal Square. The ranks of the Holocaust survivors who can still participate are becoming increasingly sparse. This time, on the 80th anniversary of the liberation, three « Mauthausen-Babys » led the memorial: Hana Berger-Moran, Mark Olsky and Eva Clarke were born a few days and weeks before the liberation in the concentration camp or on prisoners between the camps.

Van der Bellen: « In the beginning it was time to look away »

In addition to van der Bellen, the official Austria was represented by numerous members of the Federal Government – led by Federal Chancellor Christian Stocker (ÖVP), Vice Chancellor Andreas Babler (SPÖ) and Foreign Minister Beate Meinl -Reisiger (NEOS) – as well as the two National Council President Peter Haubner (ÖVP) and Doris Bures (SPÖ) and the Upper Austrian governor Thomas Stelzer (ÖVP). Politicians traditionally do not keep any speeches at the event, but take part in the train in silence.

King Felipe VI. And Queen Letizia laid a white flower wreath in front of the sarcophagus. The Spaniards belonged to one of the first large prisoner groups and were used for the construction of the notorious deaths. Van der Bellen emphasized in a written statement that Mauthausen was a reminder to vigilance. Because « there was silence at the beginning. At the beginning it was time to look away when anti -Semitism and racism showed their ugly face and groaned by society. » Stocker emphasized – also in a written statement – that Mauthausen « must always be a reminder, for which authoritarian ideologies, hatred and exclusion can lead ».

« Knowledge blames us for a never again »

The chairman of the Mauthausen Committee (MKÖ), Willi Hermernyi, also moved parallels to the present: « Many people are very pessimistic about the future and future of their children, » he said, « many, that leads to a situation as it was then before National Socialism ». But there is a big difference: « It may be that some of our ancestors in Adolf Hitler did not know or wanted to know where the hatred, the division, anti -Semitism will lead. It may not be possible that some ancestors could not know what will be possible. But we, here, here, we know it. And this knowledge blames us again, he appealed to the visitors.

Guy Dockendorf, President of the Comité International de Mauthausen, encouraged the strengthening of right -wing regimes and oligarchies worldwide to threaten democracy, the rule of law and freedom of the constitution, in view of the back of the right in the USA and Russian aggression in Ukraine, the youth, the teaching from Mauthausen.

Tradition also have an ecumenical service and celebrate various sacrificial groups and nations before the official ceremony. The Evangelical Lutheran Bishop Michael Chalupka In his sermon, reminded that « the experiences that were made in places like this led to the fact that human rights were codified internationally after the end of the Nazi rule » and that human rights were anchored in international law with the establishment of the United Nations. « If the universal validity of human rights is questioned today and international law is taken with feet, then we cannot be silent, » he warned.

German warns of « annihilation anti -Semitism » in the Middle East

The President of the Israelite Culture Community (IKG) Vienna, Oskar Deutsch, also pulled parallels to Iran and Hamas in front of the Israeli monument: “The ideological descendants of Nazism are still active today. They sing in their basements of a seventh million, they are sitting in their office of the Iranian regime in Tehran, where they are at the annihilation of the Jewish state Working Israel or in the terrorist tunnels of Hamas, where they put their annihilation anti-Semitism into practice and torture and murder Jews.

20,000 visitors

Between 1938 and 1945, almost 200,000 people from more than 40 nations were held in the Mauthausen concentration camp and around half of them did not survive the murder machinery. On May 5, 1945, the camp was released by the US Army. The liberation ceremony in Mauthausen is the largest in a whole series of similar events in the former outer camps, as took place on Saturday at the site of the former Gunskirchen concentration camp, Gusen or Ebensee or tomorrow, Monday, in Melk. Everyone stood – as well as the festival of joy last Thursday – or stand under the annual motto « Never again! ‘ ».

According to the joint estimate of the MKÖ and the police, 20,000 people took part in the celebration. The next liberation celebration will take place on May 10, 2026. (APA)