80th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation marked by dwindling number of survivors
World leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in attendance
Auschwitz survivors warned Monday of the rising antisemitism and hatred they are witnessing in the modern world as they gathered with world leaders and European royalty on the 80th anniversary of the death camp's liberation.
In all, 56 survivors gathered under a huge tent set up over a gate and railway tracks at the site of the former camp in Poland. Many participants expect it to be the last major observance with any notable number of survivors given how exhausting it is for a group whose youngest members are in their late 80s. The numbers have already dwindled considerably from the 200 survivors who attended the 75th anniversary event.
Nazi German forces murdered some 1.1 million people at the site in southern Poland, which was under German occupation during the Second World War. Most of the victims were Jews killed on an industrial scale in gas chambers, but also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, gay people and others who were targeted for elimination in the Nazi racial ideology.
Marian Turski, a 98-year-old Polish Jewish survivor, called on those gathered to turn their thoughts to the victims of the Holocaust, recalling that the number of those murdered was always far greater than the smaller group of survivors.
"We have always been a tiny minority," Turski said. "And now only a handful remain."
Among those who travelled to the site is 86-year-old Tova Friedman, who was six when she was among the 7,000 people liberated on Jan. 27, 1945. She believes it will be the last gathering of survivors at Auschwitz and she came from her home in New Jersey to add her voice to those warning about rising hatred and antisemitism.
"The world has become toxic," she told The Associated Press a day before the observances in nearby Krakow. "I realize that we're in a crisis again, that there is so much hatred around, so much distrust, that if we don't stop, it may get worse and worse. There may be another terrible destruction."
Elderly camp survivors, some wearing blue-and-white striped scarves that recall their prison uniforms, walked together to the Death Wall, where prisoners were executed, including many Poles who resisted the occupation of their country.
They were joined by Polish President Andrzej Duda, whose nation lost six million citizens during the war. He carried a candle and walked with Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum director Piotr Cywinski. At the wall, the two men bowed their heads, murmured prayers and crossed themselves.
"We Poles, on whose land — occupied by Nazi Germans at that time — the Germans built this extermination industry and this concentration camp, are today the guardians of memory," Duda said to reporters afterward.
He spoke of the "unimaginable harm" inflicted on so many people, especially the Jewish people.
'Our duty… to remember'
In all, the Germans murdered six million Jews from all over Europe, annihilating two-thirds of Europe's Jews and one-third of all Jews worldwide. In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Across Europe, officials and others paused to remember.
"As the last survivors fade, it is our duty as Europeans to remember the unspeakable crimes and to honour the memories of the victims," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is German, said on X.
Germany was represented by both Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the first time that the country's two highest leaders attended. It was a sign of Germany's continued commitment to take responsibility for the nation's crimes, even with a far-right party gaining increased support in recent years.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who leads a nation defending itself against Russia's brutal invasion, placed a candle at the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial a day before in Kyiv, where tens of thousands of Jews were executed during the Nazi occupation. On Monday, he arrived in Poland to attend the commemorations.
"The evil that seeks to destroy the lives of entire nations still remains in the world," he wrote on his Telegram page.
Russian representatives were honoured guests at past observances in recognition of the Red Army liberation of the camp on Jan. 27, 1945. But they have not been welcome since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Russian leadership expressed anger over its exclusion. "We will always remember that it was the Soviet soldier who crushed this dreadful, total evil and won the victory, the greatness of which will forever remain in world history," President Vladimir Putin said in a message to participants.
Ronald Lauder, head of the World Jewish Congress, called on the leaders gathered to oppose antisemitism, saying it was "the world's silence that led to Auschwitz."
"When the Red Army entered these gates, the world finally saw where the step-by-step progression of antisemitism leads. It leads right here. The gas chambers. The piles of bodies. All the horrors within these gates," Lauder said.
He also said that while Adolf Hitler's first targets were Jews, by the time the Second World War was over, "more than 60 million human beings were dead and this continent lay in ruins."
Lauder, 80, recalled how he has been attending the anniversary observances for 50 years, but now he must be "realistic."
World leaders attend, including Trudeau
Before the ceremony, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Canadian Auschwitz survivors who also made the journey to Poland. This may be Trudeau's last major international trip as prime minister before the next Liberal Party leader is chosen on March 9.
"The Holocaust and the unimaginable cruelty of the Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi concentration and extermination camp must never be forgotten," Trudeau said in a statement. "In Krakow today, we announced a new suite of initiatives to increase Holocaust education and awareness in Canada, and we reaffirmed our solemn vow: Never forget. Never again."
It is a sign of Germany's continued commitment to take responsibility for the nation's crimes, even with a far-right party gaining increased support in recent years.
French President Emmanuel Macron will attend after earlier observing a moment of silence at the Shoah Memorial in Paris, a symbolic tomb for the six million Jews who don't have a grave, and meeting with a survivor from Auschwitz and one from the Bergen-Belsen camp.
King Charles III will also be there, along with kings and queens from Spain, Denmark and Norway.
Russian representatives were in the past central guests at the anniversary observances in recognition of the Soviet liberation of the camp on Jan. 27, 1945, and the huge losses suffered by Soviet forces in the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany. But they have not been welcome since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
With files from CBC News