nazi camps survivors

This year Catalonia commemorates the 100th birthday of the only living Catalan survivor of the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbrück, Neus Català, whom is regarded as a symbol of anti-fascist resistance. In April, Català was given the Gold Medal of the Government of Catalonia and throughout 2015 commemorative events organised by different entities have been held to preserve Català’s testimony. This Tuesday, Neus Català turned 100 and the ‘Memorial Democràtic de Catalunya’, together with twenty other institutions, celebrated her birthday with the event ‘La vida és preciosa’ (‘Life is beautiful’). The Memorial Democràtic de Catalunya is the public institution which aims to promote the investigation of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship and commemorates the ideological victims.

L'Amical de Ravensbrück association and the Catalan Government commemorated the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany on Sunday. The association of Catalan survivors of this Nazi camp and their relatives organised the event, in which some of the camp survivors participated, including Neus Catalá - the only living Spanish survivor of Ravensbrück. The commemoration coincided with celebration of Neus Catalá, aged 99, who this year was given the Gold Medal of the Government of Catalonia, the highest award given by the institution.

Comparing Catalonia's self-determination process with the Nazi regime has become one of the arguments the Spanish nationalists have used over the last two years, repeated in extreme-right television stations and even at the Spanish Parliament. Such an offensive comparison outrages most of Catalan society, for its total unfairness in describing a democratic process and for trivialising Nazism and the suffering of its victims. Now, the issue has reached the European Parliament, where the Spanish nationalist party UPyD sent a letter to all 751 MEPs comparing the situation in Catalonia with that of "Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s". The CDU MEP Ingeborg Grässle was outraged by the letter and urged UPyD "to at least apologise". "Any politician in Germany would have immediately resigned", she added. Besides, civil society organisations in Barcelona have filed a complaint to the Public Prosecutor Office against dozens of calumnies against self-determination process and its comparison to Nazism.

Sixty Catalans travelled to Poland to honour the victims of the Romani genocide in Auschwitz concentration camp which coincides with the 70^th anniversary of the horrific crime. The delegation consisted of members of the Federation of Gypsy Associations of Catalonia (FAGIC), the Nakeramos Intercultural Association, formed by young people from Barcelona, and the women's group, Veus Gitanes. The five-day commemoration was organised by the International Roma Youth Network, ternYpe, which remembered that on the night of the 2^nd to the 3^rd  of August 1944, the Nazi regime killed 2,897 Romani people in the so-called ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Conferences, thematic history workshops and meetings with Roma survivors from the death camps were held on the 2^nd of August to pay tribute to the Roma Genocide victims at a ceremony in Auschwitz. Delegations from 20 other countries gathered to attend the commemorative events.

The project ‘Persecuted and Saved’ will tell the story of how 80,000 WW2 refugees escaped persecution and death through the Pyrenees mountains into Catalonia. The Israel Ambassador in Spain, Alon Bar, and the CEO of EL-AL - the main Israeli airline, Walter Wasercier, have already taken a key interest in the project, aiming to promote the history of the 20,000 Jews that used the mountains to escape from the Holocaust and obtain their freedom. The project is based in the Province of Lleida, in western Catalonia, around various historical sites, including refugee camps and mountain pathways used by fleeing refugees.

Neus Català, a survivor from Ravensbrück, has been recognised as a ?defender of democracy? on her 95th birthday. The event was an homage to the hundreds of women who were deported during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship whom ended in conc