The world has marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day amid signs that younger generations know less and less about the genocide of Jews, Roma and others by Nazi Germany during World War II.
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As survivors of Auschwitz marked the 74th anniversary of the notorious death camp's liberation, a far-right activist who served time in prison for burning an effigy of a Jew placed a wreath there with about 50 other Polish nationalists to protest the official observances.
Piotr Rybak said the group opposes the annual ceremony, claiming it glorifies the one million Jewish victims killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death complex and discounts the 70,000 Poles killed there.
"It's time to fight against Jewry and free Poland from them!" Rybak said as he marched to the site.
Rybak's claim is incorrect - the ceremony on Sunday at the memorial site paid homage, as it does every year, to all of the camp's victims, both Jews and gentiles.
Former Auschwitz prisoners placed flowers at an execution wall at Auschwitz, paying homage before the arrival of the nationalists at the same spot.
They wore striped scarves that recalled their uniforms, some with the red letter "P," the symbol the Germans used to mark them as Poles.
Auschwitz was later transformed into a mass killing site, operating until the liberation by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945.
In Germany, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned that across Europe, "far-right provocateurs are trying to downplay the Holocaust."
"We shall never forget. We shall never be indifferent. We must stand up for our liberal democracy," Maas wrote.
The appearance by nationalists at Auschwitz comes amid a surge of right-wing extremism in Poland.
It is fed by a broader grievance many Poles have that their suffering during the war at German hands is little known abroad while there is greater knowledge of the Jewish tragedy.
However recent surveys show that knowledge of the atrocities during World War II is declining generally.
A new study released in recent days by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the Azrieli Foundation found that 52 per cent of millennials in Canada cannot name even one concentration camp, and 62 per cent of millennials did not know that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
In Britain, a new poll by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust found that one in 20 adults in Britain do not believe the Holocaust took place.
Australian Associated Press
