A ceremony Monday marked 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp was attended by heads of state from around the world, but there was a particular focus on the voices of survivors – some of whom may not live to see another commemoration.
Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski on Monday condemned a "huge rise" in anti-Semitism, calling for "courage" against Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists, on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.
"Today, and now, we see a huge rise in anti-Semitism and it is precisely anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust," the 98-year-old told fellow survivors and world leaders at a ceremony by the gate of Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
Some 1.3 million people – most of them Jewish – were sent to Auschwitz during the four years it was in operation, but when Soviet troops liberated it on 27 January, 1945, there were only 7,000 people there.
The vast majority of those deported to the camp died at the camp – most sent to the gas chambers as soon as they arrived.
Located in occupied Poland, Auschwitz was part of a network of camps at the centre of Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution" to annihilate European Jews.
International delegations
The liberation was commemorated by some 3,000 people, with 50 international delegations, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s King Charles III, outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
There were questions over whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he travelled to Poland, given that he is subject to an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in November over alleged war crimes during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that any Israeli politician, including Netanyahu, could attend the ceremony without fear of arrest, despite the fact that Poland is a signatory to the ICC, although aides to Netanyahu have indicated that he would not be attending.
Despite the Soviet Union’s role in liberating the camp, Russia was not been invited to the ceremony, just as it was not invited to events marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France last year.
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Focus on survivors
The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum Piotr Cywiński has said he wanted the 80th anniversary to be free of contemporary politics, and that the ceremony should focus on survivors, as this may be one of the last commemorations that will include them.
Politicians were not invited to speak, instead the voices of some of the 50 survivors in attendance were heard. At the commemoration 10 years ago, 300 survivors participated.
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Teresa Regula, 96, arrived at Auschwitz at the age of 16. The Gestapo took Regula and her mother from their home in Krakow and sent them to the Plaszow camp, where her mother was executed. Regula was then transported to Auschwitz and was tattooed with the inmate number 22011.
"They shaved us down to bare skin, and it was a scorching hot day, 4 August,” she told news agency Reuters from her home in Krakow. “That was the first authentic pain I felt."
She contracted chickenpox, measles and scarlet fever in the camp. For decades after the liberation, she kept her memories repressed. "Now everything comes back to me," she said.
Educating younger generations
Janina Iwanska, 94, a Polish Catholic woman was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. She was transported from Warsaw in a freight train and recalled stepping out of it to the smell of burning bodies. In the camp, she cared for children in the block she lived in.
"The children were treated differently; they didn't have to work. They only had to wait patiently – either for their mothers or for the war to end," she told Reuters.
Iwanska did not witness the liberation of Auschwitz because she was evacuated by the Germans days prior to it, to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in northern Germany, which was liberated on 2 May, 1945.
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For decades, survivors have kept the memory of the atrocities committed by the Nazis alive, by telling and retelling their stories, with the hope of educating younger generations to not repeat the same mistakes.
But Iwanska is not optimistic about this, citing the "hatred" and divisions in modern society. "I won't live much longer. But when I look at the youth and the little ones... what will their future be? I see it as bleak."
(with Reuters, AFP)
