GERMANY: Germany yesterday commemorated the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in a climate troubled by painful warnings of a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe.
The anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on January 27th, 1945, is marked in Germany as a memorial to the millions of Jews, gypsies and others killed in Nazi concentration camps across Europe during the second World War.
This year's anniversary comes in the wake of accusations by Jewish leaders that Europe has been standing by as anti-Jewish sentiment has re-emerged, often in combination with hostility towards the state of Israel.
"It is dismaying to see that anti-Semitism, both open and latent, is spreading in our society," Mr Wolfgang Thierse, president of the German parliament, said.
Auschwitz, a complex of forced labour and death camps in Poland, has become a symbol of the Holocaust, casting a shadow over German history and deeply affecting the country's sense of identity since the end of the war.
Germany has made major efforts to come to terms with its legacy, and the EU itself is in large part the consequence of the continent's determination not to relive the history that led to Auschwitz.
But charges this month from the World Jewish Congress that the European Commission had censored a study showing Islamic radicals and pro-Palestinian left- wingers behind anti-Semitic incidents in Europe underlined concerns for the future.
"We've seen the emergence of new forms of anti-Semitism in Europe, driven in part by pressures such as resentment in the Muslim community but also drawing on a traditional stock of paranoid anti-Semitic fantasies," Mr Christopher Clark, a lecturer in German history at Cambridge University, said.