Muslim and Jewish religious leaders paid ‘historic’ visit to Auschwitz

Muslims and Jewish religious leaders paid tribute today to Holocaust victims during a “historic” – as it has been described – joint visit to Auschwitz extermination camp, a few days before the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz when the Soviet Red Army entered the camp on January 27, 1945.

The Secretary-General of the Muslim World League (MWL), Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, underlined that the visit of 60 religious officials to the death camp was “a sacred duty and a profound honour.”

The secretary-general knelt as he led Islamic prayers near the Auschwitz memorial monument dedicated to the more than one million people, most of them Jews, whom Nazi Germany killed in the camp.

David Harris, a leader of the New York-based American Jewish Committee (AJC), which organized the visit, stressed that it was the “most senior Islamic leadership delegation to ever visit Auschwitz or any Nazi German death camp.”

The visit came in the wake of remembrance ceremonies on Monday at Auschwitz death camp on the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.

Of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II, one million were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau, mostly in its notorious gas chambers.

Source: ANA-MPA