Dozens of world leaders, including King Charles III, joined a dwindling group of Nazi death camp survivors Monday in southern Poland to mark the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, where more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were killed.
A day of solemn celebration, inspired by the resurgence of nationalism in Germany and several other European countries, began early Monday near the former gas chamber and crematorium in the Polish town of Oswiecim, whose name was translated as Auschwitz in German during Hitler’s 1939-1945 reign. Poland.
The memorial continued with Auschwitz survivors – who numbered in the thousands at the end of World War II in 1945 but most of whom have since died – entered the courtyard between the two red brick houses to place candles on the wall of death.
The wall, flanked by a building where SS doctors performed gruesome and often lethal experiments on female prisoners, is where prisoners and Polish soldiers were killed by the Nazis. It is always marked with bullet holes.
On the other side of the courtyard where the opening ceremony took place is the building where, in September 1941, the SS first tested the use of Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany and later used to kill many people in gas chambers.
The elderly survivors, many of whom were frail and walking with crutches or supported by young relatives, stood for a moment and in silence at the wall after placing their candles. They were followed by President Andrzej Duda of Poland and Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. They both fall next to a row of wreaths with red and white flowers.
The flag of the Auschwitz museum, with blue and white stripes – similar to the uniform all prisoners were required to wear before they were gassed or sent to work as slaves in German factories outside the camp – flew on flagpoles over the wall. .
Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, said in an interview that “this is the most important day we will have because of the dwindling number of survivors and because of that. what is happening in the world today.”
He said: “We thought the virus of anti-Semitism was dead, but it was just lurking.”
Fewer than 50 survivors will take part in Monday’s commemoration, less than half the number who attended the 75-year-old event. “In five years, there will be very few of them,” said Mr Lauder. “And those who are still alive will not have the strength to walk.”
However, the number of foreign dignitaries continues to grow. This year’s guest list, the largest ever, includes dozens of heads of state and at least eight kings and queens. Among them is the outgoing German chancellor, Olaf Scholz and its president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Expected and who may replace Mr. Scholz, Friedrich Merz.
With less than a month to go before Germany holds national elections, Mr. Scholz, Merz and other mainstream German politicians are trying to curb support for Alternative for Germany, a far-right party known as the AfD that is widely regarded as a party. the dangerous swing to nationalism that brought Hitler to power in the 1930s.
At an election rally Saturday in eastern Germany, AfD politicians and Elon Musk, President Trump’s top adviser, who spoke via video link, urged Germans not to feel guilty about the Nazi crimes of their grandparents.
That and the rallying call for a “Greater Germany,” Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said Sunday, “sound normal and scary, especially just hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”
There is not a single leader at this event that will be held on Monday. As part of commemorative events, the house where the Nazi commander of Auschwitz lived with his family – which was the subject of the Oscar-winning film “The Zone of Interest” – was opened to visitors for the first time following its sale by its Polish owners. at the Counter Extremism Project, a group based in New York.
Mr. Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, said his state-run institution wanted to avoid political rhetoric and put survivors and commemoration of Nazi victims at the center of Monday’s events.
“Memory,” he said in an interview, “is not just crying when you look at the past, it’s not just sympathy when you look at the victims.” This is not enough. I think memory is the key to today’s time and the key to finding your position today.”
In a short speech on Polish television, Mr. Duda, the president, said his country has a special duty to preserve memory. “We Poles, in their country, at that time occupied by the Nazi Germans, the Germans who built this extermination factory and this concentration camp, today we are the custodians of memory,” he said.
“We will always remember, and with this memory, the world will never again allow such a human tragedy to happen,” he added.
The American delegation will be led by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, who played a key role in negotiating the recent Gaza peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, and Howard Lutnick, appointed by Mr. In this group there is also Charles Kushner, the father of the son-in-law of Mr. Trump Jared Kushner and chosen by Mr. Trump to be ambassador to France.
Russia, which used to participate in commemorations in Auschwitz, was not invited to this year’s commemoration, despite the liberation of the camp by the Soviet Army in January 1945. The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which the Kremlin justified on the false pretext that Ukraine, its Jewish president , was run by the Nazis. Ukraine has been invited, and will be represented by its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin has turned the Soviets’ role in Hitler’s defeat into a national cult where anyone who opposes the Kremlin is considered a Nazi. The fact that the Soviet Union effectively became Hitler’s ally was never mentioned until 1941, when the Nazis began gassing the Jews in Auschwitz. Moscow and Berlin signed a non-aggression pact in 1939 that led to the invasion of Poland by Nazi and Soviet forces later that year.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, insulted the Polish organizers of Monday’s commemoration, telling them that “your lives, jobs, entertainment, and the existence of your people, your children have been paid for with the blood of the victorious Soviet soldiers.” the Third Reich.”
Pro-Ukrainian voices on social media responded that Ukrainian soldiers, not Russians, liberated Auschwitz. The first soldiers to arrive at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination building were from the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front, a Soviet army that included soldiers from across the Soviet Union. They freed about 7,000 prisoners from the main concentration camp at Auschwitz, nearby Birkenau and the concentration camp at Monowitz.
Political tensions in the Middle East have also entered, pro-Palestinian activists want Poland to arrest members of the Israeli delegation, which is expected to be led by the minister of education, Yoav Kisch, for what they call a “massacre” in Gaza. The International Criminal Court last year issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Although Mr Netanyahu was not expected to attend, the Polish government announced this month that all visiting Israeli officials would be safe from arrest.
Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw.
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