MPs 'deeply moved' on visit to Auschwitz

All Members of Parliament should visit Auschwitz and Birkenau - the largest of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps - at one point in their careers as they serve as a chilling reminder of the consequences of intolerance, prejudice and racial hatred, MP Jason Azzopardi said.

Dr Azzopardi, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, organised a trip for Maltese MPs to Poland's world heritage site last month with the help of Israeli MP Collette Avital. He was accompanied by MPs George Vella, José Herrera, Joseph Abela, Karl Chircop and Clyde Puli.

During the three-day visit, funded by the World Jewish Agency that works to promote the remembrance of the Holocaust, they visited various places including the village of Krakow, the factory of Oskar Schindler (the German industrialist credited with saving about 1,000 Jews by having them work in his factories) as well as the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Their guide - whose family survived the holocaust - told them horrifying and spine-chilling stories of torture inflicted in the name of ethnic cleansing. They also saw various sites they will never forget such as a room with two tonnes of human hair and another with thousands of shoes belonging to victims of all ages.

Dr Azzopardi said: "It was a very terrifying and moving experience... All of us were deeply moved... We were there to experience something on a spiritual and human level that had nothing to do with politics."

He added that, while there, many people experienced two conflicting emotions. A part of them felt deeply sorry for all those people who had undergone such treatment. But another part felt guilty since they formed part of the same human race that had inflicted such atrocities on fellow human beings.

Auschwitz's three main camps began operating after the German occupation of Poland in September 1939. These were: Auschwitz I, the administrative centre, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp, and Auschwitz III (Monowitz) a work camp. The Auschwitz camps were a major element in the perpetration of the Holocaust. About 1.1 million people were killed there, of whom over 90 per cent were Jews.