On Wednesday 7 January, Auschwitz survivors from Poland, France the Czech Republic and Germany will take part in an audience with Pope Francis in Rome marking the 70th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. Together with representatives of the International Youth Meeting Center in Auschwitz and young trainees from Volkswagen AG, who were involved in the preservation of the Auschwitz Memorial in 2014, they will present the Pontiff with the ‘Gift of Remembrance’ Statuette of the International Auschwitz Committee.  The idea for the statuette came from the French woman Michèle Deodat and is based on the deliberately inverted ‘B‘ in the infamous inscription above the main camp gate in Auschwitz ‘ARBEIT MACHT FREI’ (Work makes you free), which prisoners were ordered to manufacture. The statuette is made by Volkswagen trainees in Hanover and is presented to personalities who make a special contribution towards upholding human rights and who are dedicated opponents of anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Previous recipients of the award include UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, the former President of Israel Shimon Peres and the chairman of the SPD Sigmar Gabriel.

Commenting on the meeting with the Pope, the Auschwitz survivor and musician Esther Bejarano said in Hamburg: “Naturally, when we, as Jewish survivors, have the honour of meeting the Pope, history always travels with us: the silence of the world that utterly stunned us as that time, our desperation at the indifference of our fellow human beings – how alone we were, when we and our families were forced into the trains. Today, this Pope is a prominent example of the regard that every human being owes to his or her fellow men. He invites us to shape a world together, in which there should be no place for the fear of foreigners, no place for anti-Semitism, no place for racial hatred.”

And in Berlin Christoph Heubner, the Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, stressed: “The number of anti-Semitic incidents is increasing worldwide. People are afraid of foreigners and seek false refuge in denial and aggression. The words of Pope Francis are a guiding compass for humanity and human dignity. The survivors of Auschwitz see him as a person they trust, one who encourages them to continue on their path of remembrance and enlightenment.”