Germany flags at half-mast during Holocaust commemoration

DPA
·1 min read
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Flags in front of the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament hang at half-mast on Holocaust Remembrance Day. David Young/dpa
Flags in front of the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament hang at half-mast on Holocaust Remembrance Day. David Young/dpa

Flags on German government buildings were to be flown at half-mast on Saturday to mark the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser ordered the gesture of mourning to mark the concurrent International Holocaust Remembrance Day, her ministry announced on X, formerly Twitter.

Numerous events were scheduled throughout Germany to commemorate the victims of Nazism. Faeser was due to give a speech at the Ravensbrück Memorial in Fürstenberg, 75 kilometres north of Berlin, at 11:30 am (1030 GMT).

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the survivors of the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz, the site of which is located in modern-day Oświęcim, Poland.

More than 1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz, most of them Jews. The date of its liberation has been observed as Holocaust Remembrance Day in Germany since 1996, and the United Nations proclaimed the date an international day of remembrance in 2005.