Kurier, January 21, 2020
German original: https://kurier.at/politik/inland/auschwitz-sobotka-zu-besuch-an-der-gedenkstaette/400732659
The Auschwitz Concentration Camp was liberated 75 years ago. The President of the National Council, Wolfgang Sobotka, was there.
Rifka (39) is deeply moved by several water basins, each about 20 meters long, that today grow lush aquatic plants. They are not ordinary water basins. Rifka is at the concentration- and death camp Birkenau. More than 75 years ago, the ashes of the Jews murdered in the gas chambers were dumped in them – it is practically their grave site.
And it must have been unimaginable amounts of ash – in the basins, in the air, on the lawn. Within five years, 1.1 million people were murdered in the gas chambers in the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps – because they were Jews, Roma, Russian prisoners of war, or because they resisted the Nazi regime.
Among them were also Rifka’s relatives
She is an orthodox Jew, who lost a total of 54 relatives in Auschwitz to the Nazi death machine – grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins. The unfathomable fate of her relatives has accompanied her since childhood. She has been researching her family’s fate since she was a teenager. She knows all the names of her relatives, some of whom went directly from the train ramp to the gas chamber in Birkenau or other concentration camps. Their names were Janas and Berta Farkas, Avraham and Miriam Fixler or Samuel and Lisa Hersch – just to name a few. One relative was even among the victims of medical experiments.
Beginning of Memorial Service
Today, Rifka stands before the water basin and is touched, because water plants are growing out of the ashes of the victims of Nazi terror. It is Rifka’s first visit to a concentration camp. Her parents never wanted her to be confronted with the monstrous Nazi death machine. “The stories have been accompanying me all my life anyway. My father thought that is enough. But it is good that I came to Auschwitz,” Rifka says after her visit.
Today she works as a journalist for a Jewish-American outlet. Rifka came to Birkenau and Auschwitz by invitation of the President of the National Council, Wolfgang Sobotka. His visit marks the kickoff of a series of memorial events. The concentration camp Auschwitz – Birkenau was liberated 75 years ago.
On Monday, Sobotka visited the concentration camp and participated in a conference of the European Jewish Association, where he gave a moving speech. This week, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen will first travel to Israel to attend the memorial event at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial; on Monday he will be at the memorial events in Auschwitz. The big, white tent for more than 40 leading politicians has already been erected.
For Sobotka it was not the first visit to a concentration camp. Regardless, the dimensions in Auschwitz and Birkenau are completely different than in Mauthausen. “It is oppressive every time. One cannot find an explanation for the crimes. It is not the industrialized killing, but the monstrous dimension that is unfathomable,” Sobotka described his emotions after the visit.
Many figures document how monstrous the logistics of the death camp were. For one, there was the “Hungarian Action:” within 56 days, 430,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz – according to estimates, 370,000 went directly from the train track into the gas chamber. Who was to die in the gas chamber was determined by a SS-physician’s hand signal. His thumb pointing to the left meant labor camp – and the chance to survive. His thumb pointing to the right was a death sentence.
Ban of the Identitarian Movement
How does one fight anti-Semitism in the future when there are fewer and fewer survivors of the Nazi terror? Besides videos and animated apps, Austria is going to renovate Block 17 in Auschwitz and open an exhibit in 2021. “There was already an exhibition in 1975. But back then everything focused on the victims. Now Austria’s role as a perpetrator will be highlighted next to the Jewish victims,” says Sobotka. In addition, the head of parliament calls for systematic research of anti-Semitism at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. “We have to build that. The fight against anti-Semitism is so hard because it happens out of an attitude,” according to Sobotka. This has to be analyzed empirically in the future.
And then Sobotka told the FPÖ that the party “would be well-advised to finally distance itself from the fringes of the radical right,” he said. But “apparently that is not possible,” he added.
Speaking of fringes of the radical right: How should the members of the Identitarian Movement be dealt with in the future? There, the head of parliament attracted attention with his position: “If there was a legal framework, I would outlaw them.” No such framework exists. But one should think about it carefully.