Regina Sluszny makes her way in her wheelchair through the iron gate marking the entrance to the former Auschwitz concentration camp. "I feel the cold, both physically and emotionally," says the 87-year-old Jewish woman, her gaze fixed on the grey horizon.
How many times has she been here? Six, seven, perhaps eight, she estimates. And each time, the same thoughts run through her mind: "I think about my husband's family. He lost seven loved ones here. They were sent straight to the gas chambers and murdered."
Regina Sluszny traveled to Poland with a delegation from the European Jewish Association (EJA), a European advocacy group representing Jewish interests that regularly organizes conferences on Jewish life as well as visits to former concentration camps.
This year, the organization invited political representatives and members of Jewish communities to Krakow and Auschwitz on November 9 and 10. The trip was deliberately scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the November Pogroms of 1938, widely regarded as a watershed moment on the path to the Holocaust.
"Honoring the past, securing the future" is the event's motto. Like many others in attendance, Holocaust survivor Regina Sluszny fears that the horrors of the Shoah are slowly fading from Europe's collective memory.
Among this year's international religious and political representatives, the guest of honor was Reza Pahlavi, the…
