Oswiecim: An 89-year-old French Holocaust survivor on Wednesday called for religious tolerance while accompanying youth on a visit to Nazi Germany`s notorious wartime Auschwitz death camp, now a museum in southern Poland.
Ginette Kolinka told the 150 French high-schoolers that she hoped their generation would have more luck in eradicating the horrors of war.
"Maybe you`ll make a difference and say: `let`s not speak ill of Jews, let`s not speak ill of Arabs, let`s not speak ill of Muslims," the former Auschwitz inmate said.
"We have to remember we`re all human, each with our own strengths and flaws."
She spoke a week after deadly Islamist attacks on a kosher supermarket and the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo left 17 people dead and France reeling.
One student, Estelle, was moved to tears by the visit: "They told us all about the gas chambers. I found it shocking."
"I`d heard about it all already, but to see the site in person and really understand was overwhelming."
About 1.1 million people from around Europe -- around one million of whom were Jews -- died at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp between 1940 and 1945.