Auschwitz Pledge Foundation launched to combat indifference to hatred ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day
Never forget — and never sit idly by.
A new foundation was announced in Poland on Wednesday, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, to combat ambivalence to both hatred and discrimination.
The Warsaw-based Auschwitz Pledge Foundation, announced on the eve of the 77th anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, aims to fight societies’ indifference to hatred, which it says can precede violence and genocide.
Bystander indifference “allows horrible things to happen,” Auschwitz Pledge Foundation General Director Jacek Kastelaniec said. “Our goal is to find [a way] to influence attitudes.”
The foundation will begin its mission by giving three grants, each donated by BNP Paribas bank and worth $34,000, to three projects, with hopes to expand over the years.
The former concentration camp, now a memorial site and museum, is where more than 1 million people were systematically killed by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. Hitler’s genocide brought the mass killings of 6 million Jews as well as the mass slaughter of other marginalized groups.
The foundation was announced on the heels of a 29-year-old Dutch tourist on Sunday making a Nazi salute in front of Auschwitz’s notorious gate that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” — a decision she wrote off as an “ill-considered” joke.
With News Wire Services
