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Mainz (dpa / lrs) - Commemoration between Krakow and Mainz: The Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament puts a report by the Holocaust survivor Niusia Horowitz-Karakulska at the center of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Wednesday.
The commemorative event of the state parliament on January 27th will only take place digitally due to the corona pandemic.
The Mainz State Theater was involved in the design.
The Holocaust is also being remembered in other places in the country, despite the Corona restrictions.
The 88-year-old Horowitz-Karakulska witnessed the liberation of Auschwitz herself.
After a ghetto and forced labor, she was taken to the Nazi regime's extermination camp in 1944 and sent twice to the crematorium for gassing.
The girl managed to hide and survived.
According to the state parliament, Horowitz-Karakulska is the last survivor in Poland whose name was on the list of the industrialist Oskar Schindler: He chose her to work in his metal factory in Brünnlitz and thus saved her life.
The report of the contemporary witness was recorded before the memorial event at her place of residence in Krakow, where she was also born.
In addition, State Parliament President Hendrik Hering and Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (both SPD) will speak on Holocaust Remembrance Day and exchange ideas with young people of Jewish faith from Rhineland-Palatinate.
In a "voice collage" produced by the Mainz State Theater, young people from Mainz should have their say with questions and thoughts.
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The first special session of the state parliament on Holocaust Remembrance Day took place in 1998 in the then newly established Osthofen memorial.
Last year, the state parliament placed the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi era at the center of remembrance.
Two years ago, the Holocaust survivor Henriette Kretz told about her life.
She was barely ten years old when her Jewish parents were shot in front of her eyes and survived in hiding in a nunnery.
In December, Henriette Kretz was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also for her contemporary witness discussions with schoolchildren.
From her home in Antwerp, she wrote to the German Press Agency that the children and young people she had met are similar in all democratic countries.
Upbringing at home and in school is crucial for their development into adults.
"You are always exposed to the risk of being influenced by extremist tendencies."
That is why history lessons and reports from contemporary witnesses are so important.
Henriette Kretz added that the Polish nuns who had saved her life had a poster with the general message: "Don't ask what divides us, ask what connects us."
In addition to the central commemorative event of the state parliament, there are exhibitions, film screenings and readings at other locations in Rhineland-Palatinate to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
In Alzey, for example, an ecumenical commemoration with wreath-laying ceremony is planned on the premises of the Rheinhessen specialist clinic.
In Andernach, the Remembrance initiative invites you to a discussion on everyday racism.
And in Ingelheim, the German-Israeli Circle of Friends has designed a puppet theater for young people and adults.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210125-99-156255 / 2
Program memorial event