Some of the few remaining survivors of Auschwitz returned to the notorious Nazi death camp yesterday as the world marked the 80th anniversary of its liberation.
Auschwitz was the largest of the extermination camps and has become a symbol of Nazi Germany’s genocide of 6 million Jews, 1 million of whom died at the site from 1940 to 1945, along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.
Elderly former inmates, some wearing scarves in the blue-and-white stripes of their death camp uniforms, laid flowers at the site yesterday touching the camp’s Wall of Death in silence.
Photo: Reuters
About 50 survivors were expected yesterday at the main commemoration outside the gates of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. They were to be joined by dozens of leaders, including Britain’s King Charles III and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Four former inmates — Marian Turski, Janina Iwanska, Tova Friedman and Leon Weintraub — would speak at the main event, organizers said.
“When I arrived in Auschwitz and got off the train, I saw the pits where human corpses were burned, because the crematoria could not keep up,” Iwanska, a 94-year-old Warsaw-born survivor, told Agence France-Presse earlier this month.
Photo: Agencja Wyborcza.pl via Reuters
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was also in Poland for the ceremony, and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Israeli Minister of Education Yoav Kisch were expected.
However, there would not be speeches by politicians, Auschwitz Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki said.
Speaking ahead of the anniversary, survivors around the world spoke about the need to preserve the memory of what happened when there would no longer be living witnesses.
They also warned about rising hatred and anti-Semitism in many countries and spoke of their fears about history repeating itself.
Organizers said it could be the last major anniversary with such a large group of survivors.
“We all know that in 10 years it will not be possible to have a large group for the 90th anniversary,” Sawicki said.
About 40 survivors of the Nazi camps agreed to talk before the anniversary.
In 15 countries, from Israel to Poland, Russia to Argentina, Canada to South Africa they told their stories, alone or surrounded by their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren — proof of their victory over absolute evil.
Julia Wallach, who is nearly 100, cannot talk 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.
However, 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,” she said.
Beside her, her granddaughter Frankie asked: “Will they believe us when we talk about this when she is not there?”
Esther Senot, 97, braved the Polish winter last month to go back to Birkenau with French high-school students. She kept a promise 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.”
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