(JTA) — Thousands of fans packed a stadium just a few miles from the Auschwitz death camp for a concert by the Chasidic reggae artist Matisyahu.
Matisyahu was the headliner of Saturday night’s Life Festival in Oswiecim, the town in southern Poland outside where the Auschwitz camp is located.
His show, which started around midnight, was the closing set of the three-day music and camping festival’s final concert, which included performances by RotFront, James Blunt and T.Love.
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 was to perform Sunday at a sold-out concert in the Nozyk synagogue in Warsaw, his first concert in the Polish capital.
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