UN secretary-general visits Auschwitz memorial
Ban Ki-moon visits Holocaust memorial in Auschwitz where over 1.1 million Jews died, lays wreath on execution wall, tours synagogue
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
on Monday visited the former Nazi
death camp of Auschwitz
to pay tribute to Holocaust victims.
Ban walked through the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Makes You Free) gate to see exhibitions that document the inhuman conditions that the inmates suffered there.
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Housed in red brick barracks, are the hair and belongings of the inmates, as well as an urn symbolically holding some of the victims' ashes.
Ban's visit to Auschwitz (Photo: AFP)
(Photo: Reuters)
(Photo: AFP)
Ban laid flowers at the executions wall, where thousands of inmates, mostly Polish resistance members, were shot. He then went to nearby Brzezinka, with its crematorium ruins and a monument to the victims.
Ban was also to visit the Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot synagogue, the only remaining building that testifies to the pre-war vibrant Jewish life in the town of Oswiecim.
(Photo: EPA)
(Photo: Reuters)
Between 1940-1945, some 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, died in gas chambers or from starvation, disease and forced labor in Auschwitz and the adjacent Birkenau death camp that Nazi Germany built in occupied Poland.
Ban also visited Krakow, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the Auschwitz memorial. On Tuesday he will join a UN climate conference in Warsaw.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the first UN secretary-general to visit Auschwitz in 1995.
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