„Today it’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

 

I had the great honor to meet several times Auschwitz survivors and every time listening to their testimonials was heartbreaking. Many times later, when I had the lectures for the youngest, I was concentrating on the words of the former prisoners of Auschwitz Birkenau about the superior value of peace and respect for other human beings.

 

Among 50 million dead during the Second World War, more than 12 million constitute the civilian victims of the Third Reich’s extermination policy, including more than a million deaths in the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp and extermination center.

 

Never, and in no other camp or extermination center did the SS murder such a great number of Jews from nearly all the Nazi-occupied Europe. However, many people do not know that Poles constituted nearly 40% of the prisoners registered in the camp and that those incarcerated and murdered there included also: the Roma, Soviet POWs, and prisoners of over twenty nationalities.

 

My aviation foundation also co-organized historical meetings and exhibitions. One of them was the second part of the exhibition “Music in occupied Poland 1939-1945”.

A large group of former prisoners of Auschwitz Birkenau took part in the opening of the exhibition.

The exhibition was opened by Mrs. Helena Dunicz-Niwińska (1915-2018), then 103 years old, who was a camp prisoner, and author of the book “Roads of my life. Memoirs of a violinist from Birkenau”.

As a violinist, Mrs. Helena Dunicz-Niwińska was a part of the women’s camp orchestra in the Auschwitz camp.

Mrs. Helena Dunicz Niwińska was one of the Auschwitz survivors who met with Pope Francis in Auschwitz Birkenau on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2016.

 

Respect for the dignity of EVERY person is a path to peace. We cannot remain unmoved by the suffering of any human being, no matter if it’s just a kilometer from us, or halfway around the world.

 

No more war.”

 

– Angelika Jarosławska Sapieha