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Auschwitz-Birkenau is a universal symbol. Swiss president visited the Memorial.
The president of the Swiss Confederation and Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Burkhalter together with his wife visited the Auschwitz Memorial Site and Museum on 28 January 2014. They were greeted and guided around the site of the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp by the director of the Museum, Dr Piotr M.A. Cywiński.
President Burkhalter visited a part of the museum exhibition. He saw block 4, dedicated to the extermination of Jews, block 5, where some of the items stolen from the victims are exhibited, as well as the crematorium and gas chamber in Auschwitz I. In front of the Death Wall in the courtyard of block 11, the president laid down a wreath and paid tribute to the victims.
One of the person he was accompanied by was Nathalie Gelbart, a granddaughter of a survivor of Auschwitz. “Her presence gives a particular sense to this visit and delivers a message of hope”, the president wrote into the Memorial’s guestbook.
“We owe it to the victims to keep their memory alive, and it is our responsibility towards the younger generations to explain what made possible such crimes against humanity and how to prevent similar tragedies in the future. Auschwitz-Birkenau is a universal symbol. A symbol of the worst horrors mankind is capable of. It is important to preserve it for our children and grand-children”, he continued.
In the second part of his visit, Didier Burkhalter saw the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, including the railway platform, on which the Germans carried out the selection of Jews deported to the camp and ruins of the crematorium and gas chamber II. He also lit a memory candle at the monument to the victims of the camp.
In 2013, Switzerland made a donation of 1 million EUR to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation’s Perpetual Capital. It expressed its hope that preservation efforts will contribute to the further development of educational trips of young people from Switzerland to Auschwitz.
