Emotional Auschwitz survivors used the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation as a warning to the world: push back against rising hatred of Jews – or risk sliding into darker times.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was applauded as he joined 50 other leaders – including Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Britain’s King Charles and German chancellor Olaf Scholz – to lay candles in honour of the 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, who perished here.
In total 56 survivors, many nearing 100 years old, attended Monday’s ceremony, which recalled the origins of Auschwitz as a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland for Polish political prisoners and Soviet prisoners of war.
From 1942 it was expanded into a death camp for Jews and other minorities from across Europe, most of whom were murdered on arrival in gas chambers and cremated.
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Tova Friedman survived Auschwitz as a six-year-old, living eye to eye with vicious camp dogs, thinking “it was normal that, if you were a Jewish child you have to die”.
“80 years on ... the world is again in crisis,” she said. “Our Jewish-Christian values have been overshadowed worldwide by prejudice, fear, suspicion and extremism and the rampant anti-Semitism that is spreading among the nations is shocking.”
For 98-year-old survivor Marian Turski, a member of the International Auschwitz Council, we are again seeing a “huge rise in anti-Semitism, precisely the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust”.
Another Polish survivor, Noam Weintraub, who emigrated to Sweden to avoid postwar anti-Semitism in his homeland, took a wider view.
“I implore everyone to intensify their efforts in countering the views that lead to the genocide we are commemorating today,” he said. “Especially I ask of young people: be sensitive to all expressions of intolerance or resentment towards those who are different, including skin colour, religion or sexual orientation.”
Organisers decided to focus on speeches from camp survivors at what, for many, was their last major anniversary. However, it proved impossible to keep global tensions from the event tent erected around the landmark camp gate house.
World Jewish Council president Ronald Lauder, a major benefactor of Auschwitz memorial preservation, drew parallels between the hatred and apathy towards European Jews in the 1930s and worldwide reaction to the October 7th, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel which left about 1,200 dead and resulted in 250 people being taken hostage.
Failing to push back against Nazi-led anti-Semitism resulted in a world war and millions of dead.
“When we hear chants like ‘death to Israel’ today,” said Lauder, “what they are really saying is ‘death to western civilisation’.”
Israel was represented at the event by education minister Yoav Kisch. He was asked on Polish television about international protest against the military operation in Gaza and demands, in Poland and elsewhere in Europe, to detain Israeli politicians on suspicion of involvement in genocide.
“Genocide, this word, is now abused among other things against Israel,” Kisch said. “It is crucial we have these kinds of events to maintain knowledge and awareness.”
Czech prime minister Petr Pavel agreed, linking the Palestinian death toll in Gaza, estimated at 47,000, to Hamas “using civilians in a cynical way” as human shields.
European Parliament president Roberta Metsola expressed alarm at ignorance of history among young people and called for visits to Auschwitz “to be on the curriculum of all European schoolchildren, that they would come here to see this representative of why we say ‘never again’”.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he was “very moved” by the ceremony, in particular survivor warnings about the dangers of othering and excluding any minority group.
“I think we do need to understand where many within the Jewish community are coming from,” he said. “The enormity of the Holocaust is something we can never forget ... nor dilute.”'
