Monument dedicated to Holocaust victims unveiled in Lyon

(Patria) - A monument dedicated to the Holocaust was solemnly unveiled in Lyon yesterday, ahead of today's commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The monument, titled "Rails of Memory", consists of 1,173 metres of railway tracks, symbolising the 1,173 kilometres separating Lyon from the former Auschwitz camp in Poland, where the Nazis killed several million Jews.

The monument was placed on a square near the railway station, from where many convoys departed for death camps during the Second World War.

"The work is not limited to evoking the memory of the 6,100 men, women and children from our region who were exterminated simply because they were Jews, but pays tribute to the six million victims, a number that must be constantly repeated, so as not to forget," local authorities announced.

- Antisemitism is a deadly poison that must be fought with force - said the mayor of Lyon, Grégory Doucet.



Auschwitz-Birkenau became a symbol of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against six million European Jews, of whom one million died at that site, between 1940 and 1945, along with more than 100,000 people of non-Jewish origin.

Soviet forces arrived at the camp on 27 January 1945 and found 7,000 survivors.

The day of the camp's liberation was proclaimed by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.