Auschwitz survivors mark 80th anniversary of liberation
Holocaust survivors have warned of the dangers of rising antisemitism as they marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
World leaders, including Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong and the King, gathered in Poland on Monday (local time) at the site where more than 1.1 million people perished in World War II.
They did not make speeches, but rather listened to the last remaining survivors of one of humanity’s greatest atrocities.
The anniversary was also attended by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Polish President Andrzej Duda, King Frederik and Queen Mary of Denmark and a host of other leaders.
In Britain, the Prince and Princess of Wales attended a ceremony to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and met with survivors.
Prince William spoke of his great-grandmother Princess Alice, who helped to protect a Jewish widow and her family in Greece during the Nazi occupation by hiding them in her home.
Princess of Wales meets survivor Yvonne Bernstein during a ceremony in London. Photo: AAP
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At her speech in Poland, Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski, 98, gave an ominous warning about a disturbing global trend.
“We see in the modern world today a great increase in antisemitism, and it was antisemitism that led to the Holocaust,” said Turski, who survived the westward “death march” to Buchenwald in 1945.
“Let’s not be afraid to convince ourselves that we can solve problems between neighbours.”
Retired pharmacist Janina Iwanska, a Polish Catholic, said that “80 years after the liberation, the world is again in crisis”.
“Our Jewish-Christian values have been overshadowed worldwide by prejudice, fear, suspicion and extremism,” she said.
“The rampant antisemitism that is spreading among the nations is shocking.”
The King places a candle at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Photo: AAP
Antisemitic incidents have surged, in part along with protests against Israel in many parts of Europe, North America and Australia, since Israel launched its assault on the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip after attacks on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023.
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Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said that hatred of Jews was rising against the backdrop of that war.
“Young people are getting most of their information from social media, and that is dangerous,” he said.
Before the ceremony, held in a tent built over the gate to the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, leaders stressed how important it was to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.
“The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task, and in so doing we inform our present and shape our future,” the King said on a visit to the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow.
Duda said at the camp “we Poles, on whose land the Germans built this concentration camp, are today the guardians of memory”.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz. Most had been brought in freight wagons, packed like livestock.
More than three million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
In all, between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, along with gypsies, sexual minorities, disabled people and others who offended Nazi ideas of racial superiority.
Remembrance of crimes committed in the name of Nazi notions of racial superiority has become an acute political issue in recent years with the rise of far-right parties across Europe.
On Saturday, billionaire Elon Musk, a high-profile adviser to US President Donald Trump, spoke via video to supporters of Germany’s AfD (Alternative fuer Deutschland). The party is running second in polls for the February 23 election on a platform that includes playing down historical guilt for the Holocaust.
“Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents,” said Musk, who laid a wreath at Auschwitz a year ago.
The rally prompted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to say that “the words we heard from the main actors of the AfD rally about ‘Great Germany’ and ‘the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes’ sounded all too familiar and ominous”.
– with AAP
