On 27 January 2005, following her attendance at the ceremony commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, she created friction by referring to the way some Protestant children in Northern Ireland had been raised to hate Catholics, just as European children "for generations, for centuries" were encouraged to hate Jews. These remarks provoked outrage among unionist politicians. McAleese later apologised, conceding that her comments had been unbalanced because she had criticised only the sectarianism found on one side of the community.