At Auschwitz, a solemn ceremony at a time of rising nationalism
WARSAW, Poland — Dozens of world leaders, including Britain’s king and the president of Ukraine, joined a dwindling group of Nazi death camp survivors on Monday in southern Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, where more than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered.
A day of solemn ceremony held near former gas chambers and crematories in the Polish town of Oswiecim, whose name was Germanized to Auschwitz during Adolf Hitler’s 1939-1945 occupation of Poland, was shadowed throughout by a resurgence of nationalism in Germany and other European countries.
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“In a place where the technique of mass and industrial murder was introduced, I feel great sorrow and regret very much that in many European countries, including our country, people in uniforms similar to Nazis and proclaiming Nazi slogans march with impunity,” Leon Weintraub, a 99-year-old Polish Auschwitz survivor, told a gathering of presidents, royalty and other dignitaries.
Speaking in a large tent erected at the entrance to Birkenau, an annex to the Nazi’s original extermination camp, Auschwitz I, he added: “Let us take seriously what the enemies of democracy preach. They really want to put into practice what they preach, these slogans that they propagate, if they manage to come to power.
“Let us avoid the mistake of the 1930s, when the German Nazis were not believed, their intentions to create a state free of Jews, Roma, people with different views and the sick considered unworthy of life were disregarded.”
After prayers were read by Jewish rabbis and Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian priests, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, led King Charles III of Britain, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron of France and other guests in laying votive candles on a platform in front of a railway car.
The carriage, placed at the red brick entrance to Birkenau, was one of those that carried Jews, Roma and others considered subhuman by the Nazis to their deaths at the wartime death factory.
Speakers at the main ceremony, mostly survivors, warned of a dangerous rise in antisemitism and extremism, expressing alarm that the message of “never again” was being forgotten, particularly by young people hooked on social media.
Tova Friedman, a Polish-born American who was sent to Auschwitz as a young girl and held in a section of the camp reserved for children, recalled arriving by train and seeing “a terrible smoke hanging in the air.” She added: “I knew what this meant. We all knew.”
Lamenting the “shocking” spread of “rampant antisemitism,” Friedman said: “Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the world is again in crisis. Our Jewish Christian values have been overshadowed worldwide by prejudice, fear, suspicion and extremism.”
At the end of World War II in 1945, said Janina Iwanska, another survivor, “people believed this could never happen again” but “it is impossible now to say ‘never again.’ War and chaos can erupt anywhere, leaving no place for people to flee.”
When Soviet troops arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Jan. 27, 1945, tens of thousands of weakened prisoners had already been removed by the Nazis and sent on a long, deadly march toward Germany. An estimated 15,000 were shot or died of cold, hunger and illness along the way.
The Red Army found only 7,000 prisoners left when they liberated the main camp at Auschwitz, nearby Birkenau and a slave labor camp at Monowitz. Most have since died, and fewer than 50 survivors took part in Monday’s commemoration, less than half the number who attended the 75th anniversary.
“In five years, there will be very few left. And those who are still alive won’t have the energy to go,” Ronald S. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress and chair of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, said in an interview.
“This is the most important anniversary we are going to have because of the shrinking number of survivors and because of what is happening in the world today,” he added.
The number of foreign dignitaries, however, keeps growing. This year’s guest list was the largest ever and included Germany’s departing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and its president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.