By
Adam Easton -BBC News, Auschwitz
Muslim leaders from around
the world have taken part in an unprecedented trip to Germany and Poland to see
and hear for themselves about the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust.
The 11 imams, sheiks and
religious teachers from nine countries met a Holocaust survivor and Poles whose
families risked execution to save Jews from the Nazis, in the Polish capital's
Nozyk Synagogue as part of the tour.
They have been around
museums, including the recently opened Museum of the History of Polish Jews on
the site of the former Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw. And they also visited the
Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps.
"The main aim is to
get Muslims who are leaders all over the world, particularly in the Middle
East, to acknowledge the reality of what happened here and to be able to teach
it to the people that they lead," said trip organiser Rabbi Jack Bemporad,
who is executive director of the US-based Center for Interreligious
Understanding.
He was standing underneath
the red brick watchtower over the main entrance to Birkenau, the largest of
more than 40 camps that made up the Auschwitz complex. This was where the Nazis
installed four gas chambers and crematoria to speed up the murder and disposal
of people, who were mostly Jews, from across Europe.
More
understanding
Auschwitz-Birkenau, set up
by the Germans in Nazi-occupied Poland, is largely intact and is now a museum.
Historians estimate 1.1 million people were killed there - one million of them
were Jews but there were also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and others.
"I think that when
someone wants to deny the Holocaust or think that it is exaggerated, which many
of them do and certainly many of their followers do, when they come here and
see it, their experience is such that they can no longer think that,"
Rabbi Bemporad said.
Beside the ruins of one of
the gas chambers - the Germans blew them up as they retreated, in an effort to
hide their crimes - the Muslim leaders paused for a moment's silence.
"You may read every
book about the Holocaust but it's nothing like when you see this place where
people were burned," said Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society
of North America.
"This is the
building, the bricks. If they were to speak to you and I, they would tell you
how many cries and screams they have heard."
Mr Magid, who is
originally from Sudan, first visited Auschwitz-Birkenau during a trip organised
for American imams in 2010. He said the experience had led him to hold an
annual Seder, a Jewish ceremonial meal, at his mosque in Virginia where he
invites people to listen to the story of a Holocaust survivor who was saved by
a Muslim family.
"We go back more
committed to human rights and more understanding of conflicts and how to resolve
them, but also to be careful of a curriculum that teaches racism and
hatred," he said.
Pain
and injustice
Earlier, the group had
taken photos as they walked around an exhibition in the red brick barrack
blocks at Auschwitz, about 2 miles (3kms) from Birkenau.
They made comments such as
"Can you imagine?" and "It's beyond comprehension" as they
saw a great pile of hair shorn from women prisoners that was used to make
rudimentary textiles. They shook their heads as they saw faded children's shoes
and dolls in glass cases.
After they had seen just
two of the 14 exhibition blocks, some of the group asked for a break and they
knelt in prayer beside the camp's execution wall.
Barakat Hasan, a
Palestinian imam and director of the Center for Studies and Islamic Media in
Jerusalem, said he "didn't know many details about the Holocaust"
before the trip.
"I felt my heart
bleeding when I was looking at all this. I was fighting back tears," he
said through an interpreter. "As a Palestinian living under occupation, I feel
sympathy for the pain and injustice that was inflicted on the Jews," he
added.
Mr Hasan said he did not
believe there were people in the Muslim world who denied the Holocaust
happened, but he said there was discussion in his community about whether the
commonly quoted figure of six million Jewish victims was correct.
"Maybe now after
seeing what I've seen, maybe the numbers are correct also," he said,
adding that he would write articles and mention his trip on Facebook.
As he walked along the
railway line and unloading ramp at Birkenau - where the trains hauling cattle
cars crammed with Jews arrived - Ahmet Muharrem Atlig, a Turkish imam and
secretary general of the Journalists and Writers Foundation in Istanbul, said
he wept when he saw a photograph that showed children looking scared as they
got off a train.
"Unfortunately the
Muslim communities and congregation don't know much about the Holocaust,"
he said.
"Yes, we've heard
something. But we have to come and see what happened here. It's not just about
Jews, or Christians, this is all about human beings because the human race
suffered here."
