The railway tracks leading to the main gates at Auschwitz II - Birkenau seen on December 10, 2004. Photo / Getty Images
The railway tracks leading to the main gates at Auschwitz II - Birkenau seen on December 10, 2004. Photo / Getty Images
The world marks the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, with survivors and leaders attending ceremonies.
Death camp survivors emphasise preserving the memory and warn of rising hatred and anti-Semitism globally.
Organisers note this may be the last major anniversary with a large group of survivors present.
The world marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Monday, with some of the few remaining survivors set to attend ceremonies at the site of the notorious Nazi death camp.
Auschwitz was the largest of the extermination camps and has become a symbol of Nazi Germany’s genocide of six million European Jews, one million of whom died at the site between 1940 and 1945, with more than 100,000 non-Jews.
It was in German-occupied Poland during World War II.
On Monday former inmates, with Polish President Andrzej Duda, are expected to lay flowers at the sprawling camp’s Wall of Death in the morning.
Around 50 survivors are then expected at a commemoration from 3pm GMT outside the gates of Auschwitz II-Birkenau alongside dozens of leaders, including Britain’s King Charles III and French President Emmanuel Macron.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz are both expected, as well as Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch.
“This year we will focus on the survivors and their message,” Auschwitz Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told AFP. “There will not be any speeches by politicians.”
Speaking to AFP ahead of the anniversary, survivors around the world spoke about the need to preserve the memory of what happened when there will no longer be living witnesses.
Until its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Russian delegation had always attended the annual liberation ceremony but Moscow will be barred again this year.
The International Criminal Court last year issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on suspicion of crimes against humanity and war crimes over the war in Gaza.
After a request from Duda, the Polish Government confirmed last month that it would not arrest Netanyahu if he were to visit, even though the Israeli leader has not expressed any intentions to attend.
Some 40 survivors of the Nazi camps agreed to talk to AFP in the run-up to the anniversary.
In 15 countries, from Israel to Poland, Russia to Argentina, Canada to South Africa they sat in front of our cameras to tell their stories, alone or surrounded by their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – proof of their victory over absolute evil.
“How did the world allow Auschwitz?” asked 95-year-old Marta Neuwirth from Santiago, Chile.
She was 15 when she was sent from Hungary to Auschwitz.
Julia Wallach, who is nearly 100, has difficulty talking about what happened without crying.
“It is too difficult to talk about, too hard,” she said. The Parisian was dragged off a lorry destined for the gas chamber in Birkenau at the last minute.
But hard as it is to relive the horrors, she insisted she would continue to give witness.
“As long as I can do it, I will do it.” Beside her, her granddaughter Frankie asked: “Will they believe us when we talk about this when she is not there?”
That is why Esther Senot, 97, braved the Polish winter last month to go back to Birkenau with French high school students.
She was keeping a promise she made in 1944 to her dying sister Fanny, who – laid out on the straw coughing up blood – asked her with her last breath to “tell what happened to us so that we are not forgotten by history”.
