European press review

Europe's press grapples with the enormity of the Holocaust on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, with German papers in particular debating its meaning for their country's identity.

'Impossible to comprehend'

France's Liberation graphically highlights the horrors of the Holocaust with a front-page photo of four naked, skeletal concentration camp children, captioned in large letters with "The duty to history".

As world leaders gather in Poland to mark the anniversary, the paper believes the Nazi genocide defies the danger of being trivialised by ritual commemoration ceremonies.

Contrary to the new dawn promised after World War II, mass genocides have been committed again and again El Pais

"Auschwitz and the Holocaust," its editorial says, "contain something that resists making them a historical fact among others... as if the thing represented transcended the capacity to represent it."

Also in France, a commentary in Le Nouvel Observateur wonders how such depths can possibly be put into words.

"In a society fond of all sorts of commemorations... how can the new generations be made to realise the uniqueness of the genocide of the Jews?" the paper asks. "How can the idea be put across that the Holocaust is beyond any comparison?"

"How can it be made understood that, 60 years on, this is still impossible to comprehend, and no doubt will remain so for all eternity?"

Spain's El Periodico also believes the extermination of the Jews during World War II is in a category of its own.

"The cruelty of the Holocaust bears no comparison with any of the other genocides that preceded it... or those that followed," it says, adding that it "shows us the ultimate depths that man's inhumanity can reach".

Another Spanish paper, El Pais, believes that simply paying tribute to the victims of the Holocaust is not enough, and criticises the international community for not preventing other atrocities from happening since then.

"Contrary to the new dawn promised after World War II, mass genocides have been committed again and again," it says. "The memories are still fresh of harrowing examples like Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and, at this very moment, Sudan."

Identity crisis?

In Germany, the Frankfurter Rundschau detects a recent tendency in its countrymen to focus on the suffering of Germans during World War II, rather than on Auschwitz or those who profited from the genocide.

It is for this reason, it argues, that Germany needs today's anniversary, despite objections that the "day of victims and liberators" may be unsuitable as a national memorial day.

We will not get away from Hitler by making the Holocaust a negative founding myth Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

The daily also warns against what it sees as a tendency to equate the crimes of the Nazis with those of the former East German regime, stressing the need to distinguish murder from genocide.

"At some point, murder will pass into oblivion, as a rule after a generation," it quotes a veteran Liberal politician as saying, "but Auschwitz never will, even after 100 generations."

But the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warns against making the genocide the basis of German or European identity.

"We will not get away from Hitler by making the Holocaust a negative founding myth" of a new Germany or Europe, according to the paper.

"This is an honour which this criminal does not deserve," it says, and one which would "mock the victims".

'Errors and flaws'

In Austria, Der Standard accuses the country's government of failing to mark the Auschwitz anniversary adequately, saying its efforts offer a poor contrast to the memorial events in Germany.

"This day will certainly be remembered and mourned privately, but our government seems intent on ignoring the anniversary, to put it politely," the paper chides, and stresses the need to keep awareness of the Holocaust alive.

"Austria needs a culture of remembrance worthy of the name," it urges.

The Swiss paper Le Temps expresses its hurt at remarks by the head of International Jewish Congress, Israel Singer, describing Switzerland's neutrality "in the face of evil" during World War II as a crime.

Mr Singer's comments "wound all the Swiss who... have realized the errors and flaws of the policy pursued back then", the paper thinks, and adds: "Switzerland has worked remarkably hard to reconsider its wartime record."

Moscow's Krasnaya Zvezda, meanwhile, accuses the West of airbrushing the Soviet role in World War II and the liberation of Auschwitz out of history books.

"The vast majority of readers and TV viewers in the West... think the United States played the main role in the defeat of German fascism... [and] that Europe and millions of prisoners of the Nazis were liberated under American leadership," it complains.

"Some believe," the paper adds, "that Russia was just 'hanging about', while others even think that it fought on Germany's side."

The European press review is compiled by BBC Monitoring from internet editions of the main European newspapers and some early printed editions.