
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 23, 1995                   TAG: 9501240059
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JERUSALEM                                LENGTH: Short

JEWS CELEBRATE AUSCHWITZ'S END

The dark red railroad car, built to transport cattle, had a more odious purpose.

As a 13-year-old boy, Holocaust survivor Samuel Pisar rode such a car to the Auschwitz death camp. On Sunday, one perched on rails over an abyss in a Jerusalem hillside was dedicated as a monument for those who survived and a memorial to those who didn't.

Pisar joined 2,700 other survivors of the Auschwitz death camp and their families, who met for the first time in Israel to mark the 50th anniversary of the camp's liberation.

``In the name of the martyrs and the survivors and with the Auschwitz number engraved on my arm, I invite you ... to pray that such trains will never roll again,'' Pisar said at the ceremony, held at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Auschwitz, in southern Nazi-occupied Poland, was Nazi Germany's largest concentration and death camp. More than 1.5 million people were gassed, shot or starved to death there, 90 percent of them Jews.

The cattle car was donated to Israel by the Polish government in 1990. Israeli architect Moshe Safdie designed the memorial.

The Soviet Union liberated Auschwitz on Jan.27, 1945, but the event was marked Sunday in accordance with the Hebrew calendar.

by CNB