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SUBJECT: 65TH ANNIVERSARY OF AUSCHWITZ LIBERATION 
HIGHLIGHTS POLISH-JEWISH PROGRESS 
 
REF: WARSAW 57 
 
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¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY:  Polish government officials addressed 
Jewish and Polish suffering in ceremonies marking the 65th 
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  FCC 
Chairman Julius M. Genachowski, who led the U.S. Presidential 
Delegation, participated in a Holocaust education conference 
attended by high-level officials from 32 countries.  At the 
conference, Chairman Genachowki introduced a video message 
from President Obama.  The delegation later attended the 
opening of a new Russian exhibit at Auschwitz-I -- an 
important development in terms of Poland's efforts to "reset" 
its relations with Russia, although the exhibit retains many 
of the themes and elements of its Soviet-era predecessor. 
Remarks by Polish President Kaczynski, PM Tusk, and 
International Auschwitz Council Chairman Wladyslaw 
Bartoszewski all focused on the obligation to remember and to 
ensure that Holocaust-era atrocities are never repeated. 
Israeli PM Netanyahu noted the prominent role of Polish 
Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and 
thanked Polish officials for their efforts to preserve the 
memory of the Holocaust.  END SUMMARY. 
 
¶2. (U) A U.S. Presidential delegation led by FCC Chairman 
Julius M. Genachowski visited Krakow and Oswiecim January 
26-28 to take part in ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary 
of the liberation of the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. 
Other delegation members included Ambassador Feinstein; Susan 
¶S. Sher, Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the 
First Lady; U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat 
Anti-Semitism Hannah S. Rosenthal; as well as three Auschwitz 
survivors:  Roman R. Kent, Vice President of the 
International Auschwitz Committee; Charlene P. Schiff; and 
Edwarda Sternberg-Powidzki.  During the commemoration 
ceremonies, Polish President Lech Kaczynski presented U.S. 
Holocaust Memorial Museum Executive Director Sara Bloomfield 
with the Republic of Poland's Order of Merit award for her 
achievements in the field of Holocaust education. 
 
"MEMORY, RESPONSIBILITY, EDUCATION" 
 
¶3. (U) Prior to the January 27 formal ceremony, the 
delegation participated, along with Philip Rosenfelt and 
Matthew Yale of the U.S. Department of Education, in a 
Holocaust Education conference in Oswiecim hosted by Polish 
Education Minister Katarzyna Hall.  The conference, entitled 
"Auschwitz -- Memory, Responsibility, Education," was 
attended by high-level government officials from 32 
countries.  Addressing conference participants, Chairman 
Genachowski described his family's experience during the 
Holocaust and the heroism of non-Jews who risked their lives 
to save his parents.  He noted that survival brings with it 
obligations:  he quoted Elie Wiesel, who taught "If we 
forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices."  Genachowski 
noted that the memory of atrocities committed at Auschwitz 
must steel humanity's resolve to fight anti-Semitism, hatred 
and racism.  He urged the deployment of technology -- 
perverted for evil by the Nazis --  "to shine a light on 
oppression and intolerance, to illuminate persecution and 
dehumanization, and to take oppression and mass murder out of 
the shadows."  He also underscored the moral imperative to 
preserve Auchwitz and other physical sites of remembrance, 
"because they shock us into an understanding that ideas alone 
cannot." 
 
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S VIDEO MESSAGE 
 
¶4. (U) Following presentations from each delegation, 
Genachowski introduced President Obama's video message, in 
which the President expressed gratitude to Poland's 
leadership for "preserving a place of such great pain for the 
Polish people (...) a place of remembrance and learning for 
the world."  In his remarks, the President emphasized the 
"sacred duty to remember," as well as the "burden of seeing 
our common humanity; of resisting anti-Semitism and ignorance 
in all its forms; of refusing to become a bystander to evil, 
whenever and wherever it rears its ugly face."  In addition 
to recalling the evil committed at Auschwitz, the President 
also spoke about humanity's capacity for good and recalled 
acts of compassion and resistance, including "Polish rescuers 
and those who earned their place forever in the Righteous 
Among the Nations."  He also praised survivors as "living 
memorials to the loved ones you left here.  And to the spirit 
we must strive to uphold in our time."  The President's video 
message aired almost simultaneously in Krakow at the Third 
International Forum "Let My People Live" hosted by the 
 
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European Jewish Congress. 
 
RUSSIAN EXHIBIT 
 
¶5. (SBU) Following the Holocaust education conference, the 
delegation attended the opening of an exhibit focused on the 
Soviet Army's liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The exhibit, 
intended to replace a Soviet-era installation, has been the 
subject of prolonged negotiations between the Russian 
government and the Polish government-run Auschwitz-Birkenau 
Museum.  At issue are competing narratives of Polish and 
Russian heroism/suffering during and after World War II.  The 
new exhibit -- not yet complete -- opened on a temporary 
basis.  It still retains many of the same themes and elements 
of its Soviet-era predecessor, and fails to mention who the 
victims of Auschwitz were.  Nonetheless, GOP officials 
on-site characterized the fact that the exhibit opened at all 
as an important step forward in their efforts to "reset" with 
Russia. 
 
OFFICIAL CEREMONY 
 
¶6. (U) President Kaczynski, PM Tusk, Israeli PM Netanyahu, 
Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Director Piotr Cywinski, and two 
survivors -- one a Polish Jew and one a Polish Catholic -- 
addressed delegates, survivors, those who rescued Jews during 
World War II, and the general public.  A Roma survivor also 
invited to attend was waylaid by a minor auto accident en 
route to Oswiecim.  Russian Education Minister Fursenko read 
a letter from President Medvedev.  On the margins of the 
ceremony, Ambassador Feinstein and Chairman Genachowski spoke 
briefly with President Kaczynski and PM Netanyahu. 
 
¶7. (U) In his speech, President Kaczynski pointed out that 
the Nazis originally tested their extermination technology on 
Polish political prisoners interned at Auschwitz-I.  Although 
Polish Catholics and Jews both suffered disproportionately at 
Auschwitz, only Jews were singled out for murder simply 
because they were Jews, he said.  Kaczynski stressed the 
importance of education and memory to ensure that atrocities 
committed at Nazi death camps throughout Europe -- many on 
occupied Polish soil -- were never repeated again.  The 
President concluded by noting that the crimes committed at 
Auschwitz were not committed by a criminal group, but by a 
state -- "by the then-German state, the Third Reich.  We must 
remember that might does not always make right." 
 
¶8. (U) Both PM Tusk and his Plenipotentiary for International 
Dialogue, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski (an 88-year-old Auschwitz 
survivor who chairs the International Auschwitz Council) 
invoked the name of Jan Karski, the Polish courier who in 
1942-43 carried news of Nazi atrocities to the UK and the 
United States.  "Why was the world silent?  Why did the world 
allow it to happen?" Tusk asked, moments after Bartoszewski 
noted that the "free world was not interested in our 
suffering and death."  Bartoszewski expressed hope that 
memory of victims' suffering would oblige future generations 
to live together in respect for human dignity and in active 
defiance of hatred and disdain towards other people "and 
especially all forms of xenophobia and anti-Semitism, even 
when it is hypocritically called anti-Zionism."  Tusk spoke 
of the duty to bear witness against the deepest despair and 
organized hatred, to ensure that it never happens again. 
Tusk and Bartoszewski both highlighted the urgent need to 
fund preservation projects at Auschwitz, expressing hope that 
more countries would contribute to the Auschwitz-Birkenau 
endownment. 
 
¶9. (U) Israeli PM Netanyahu began his remarks by thanking the 
GOP for the "historic effort it is making to commemorate the 
greatest catastrophe that befell my people and the greatest 
crime committed against humanity."  He noted the long history 
shared by Poles and Jews, one which includes tremendous 
cultural accomplishments and the "lowest low" humanity has 
experienced.  He noted that one-third of the Righteous 
Gentiles -- those who risked their lives and their families' 
lives to save Jews -- were Poles. 
 
MEMORIAL EVENT 
 
¶10. (U) Following the formal ceremony, high-ranking 
government officials, religious leaders, heads of delegation, 
representatives of the diplomatic corps, and survivors walked 
in silence to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial.  After Union 
of Jewish Communities president Piotr Kadlcik blew the 
shofar, Poland's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich recited 
 
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Kaddish and Lodz rabbi Simcha Keller recited El Maley 
Rachamim.  After President Kaczynski's chaplain, Reverend 
Roman Indrzejczyk, delivered a brief prayer of eternal rest, 
Catholic and Jewish religious leaders together recited Psalm 
¶42.  Following prayers, President Kaczynski, PM Tusk, heads 
of delegation, ambassadors, and survivors were invited to 
place candles at the base of the monument. 
 
COMMENT 
 
¶11. (SBU) GOP officials were clearly intent throughout the 
day on demonstrating their responsible stewardship of the 
Auschwitz site -- as well as their ownership of the 
commemoration and other related events.  That said, 
participants at the ceremony told Embassy representatives 
they had observed since 1989 an evolution in Polish rhetoric 
on the nature of suffering at Auschwitz.  Rather than 
focusing on Polish suffering -- as was the case before 1989 
-- President Kaczynski and other GOP officials emphasized 
Jewish suffering.  Several Embassy contacts in the Jewish 
community characterized this as an important development for 
Polish-Jewish relations. 
FEINSTEIN