(JEWISH GROUP) Solemn ceremony marks 80 years of Mauthausen concentration camp liberation
Thousands of people took part Sunday in the solemn ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp, an event that has been held annually since 1946 on the initiative of the survivors and their associations.
The slave labour camp in upper Austria was known for its extremely harsh conditions, considered to be even more severe than in other Nazi German death camps. It held nearly 190,000 prisoners during World War II, half of whom did not survive.
Those who died in the camp must not be forgotten, as the organisers of the event insisted.
"Nothing can be erased. Neither the transports, nor the forced labour, imprisonment, barracks, illness, cold, lack of sleep, hunger, humiliation, degradation, beatings, screams. Nothing can, nothing must be forgotten," said Guy Dockendorf, president of the International Mauthausen Committee (CIM).
Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen and several members of the Austrian government, including Chancellor Stocker, Vice Chancellor Babler and Foreign Minister Meinl-Reisinger, were in attendance.
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