Praise for those who helped inmates

DOZENS of people who lived near Auschwitz and risked their lives to help inmates at the Nazi death camp were honoured on Saturday, the 62nd anniversary of the camp’s liberation.

At a ceremony outside the site, Holocaust survivors and local residents listened to a letter from Polish President Lech Kaczynski in which he said that the world has underestimated the determination of people outside the camp to save prisoners.

“World public opinion has often held that the residents of the area were completely indifferent to the fate of the prisoners,” Kaczynski said in the letter, which denounced “such unjust statements”.