NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      WARSAW (CWNews.com) - Polish officials and Nazi death camp survivors on Wednesday marked the 54th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp with a Mass and a silent march.

      More than 1.5 million people were killed at Auschwitz and the nearby Birkenau, most of the Jews, but also including Catholics, Gypsies, Soviets, and others. The toll of the dead included St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Edith Stein. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army marching toward Berlin found 7,600 sick and exhausted inmates, including 500 children, at the camp in southern Poland that had been evacuated by fleeing Nazis.

      About 200 people gathered at a Catholic church in nearby Oswiecim for a Mass and then marched silently to the former camp where they laid flowers at the Death Wall, where 25,000 people were executed.