Thousands of fans packed a stadium just a few miles from the Auschwitz death camp for a June 18 concert by Chassidic reggae artist Matisyahu.
Matisyahu was the headliner of the Life Festival in Oswiecim, the town in southern Poland outside where the Auschwitz camp was located.
His show, which started around midnight, was the closing set of the three-day music and camping festival. The festival was founded last year by a popular Polish disc jockey to use music and youth culture to fight anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia, and send “a message of peace and tolerance” from the place that is a symbol of the Holocaust.
Matisyahu also performed June 19 in front of a sold-out crowd in the Nozyk synagogue in Warsaw; it was his first concert in the Polish capital. — jta