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Press Information published by the International Auschwitz Committee

03.09.2018

Letter for today’s concert in Chemnitz #wir sind mehr sent by young people from Germany and Poland: “Your smile is also our smile”

 
 
Young people from Poland and Germany in front of Auschwitz-Birkenau

 

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At the moment young Volkswagen trainees from Wolfsburg, Emden and Osnabrück are working together with Polish vocational college students and the International Auschwitz Committee at the Auschwitz Memorial for 14 days. It is in this place that they have been following and discussing the events in Chemnitz over the past few days with great interest and deep dismay. They have spontaneously decided to send the following letter to the people gathered at today’s concert #wir sind mehr (#there are more of us).

Hello to you all in Chemnitz!

We’re writing to you from Auschwitz. At the moment we are working at the Memorials of Auschwitz and Birkenau: trainees from Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Emden and Osnabrück and Polish vocational college students from Bielsko-Biala. Together we are helping the colleagues from the Memorial and the International Auschwitz Committee to preserve the Memorial.

Every day in Auschwitz we pass beneath a permanent reminder of the courage shown by prisoners. It is a simple letter: the letter B. Prisoners in Auschwitz secretly inverted the B in the inscription ARBEIT MACHT FREI (work makes you free) when they welded the words together. The prisoners were extremely angry, and they had great courage, the courage born from desperation in the horrors of Auschwitz: courage and resistance against the hatred of the SS.

We are writing to you from Auschwitz, because we want to thank you, each and every one of you gathered in Chemnitz today, for demonstrating your courage, not the courage born of desperation, but the courage to oppose hatred.

Every day we see the gate to Birkenau: Auschwitz II – it is this and similar reminders that Herr Höcke and his friends want to eradicate. We do not want that!!! There are also people amongst our families and acquaintances who talk nonsense: about strangers, Jews, foreigners, democracy. We love them, but we still tell them that they are talking nonsense, and that hatred distorts not only your face but also your life. That’s why we’re saying: Thank you! Your courage is also our courage. Your smile is also our smile.

Greetings to you all, from us young Polish and German people – There are more of us!
So long for now – do widzenia!

 
 
 

For further Information

Christoph Heubner

Executive Vice President
International Auschwitz Committee
Phone ++ 49 (0)30 26 39 26 81