This January 27, 2025, the commemoration ceremony of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp 80 years ago will take place. During the Second World War, a million Jews were massacred there. As the last of the 7,000 survivors disappear, it is more important than ever to do this work of remembrance and recall a promise engraved in stone in Poland: “Never again.”
Eighty years later, the world commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday, where ceremonies, on the very site of this former German Nazi camp, are expected to bring together around fifty survivors.
Under the historic entrance gate of Birkenau, they will take part in an official ceremony, alongside dozens of leaders, including King Charles III and French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as the German Chancellor and President, Olaf Scholz and Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
How will the commemorations take place? ?
The ceremony is scheduled to begin at 4pm local time (3pm GMT) on Monday and will bring together 54 international delegations.
“This year, we are focusing on the survivors and their message,” Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the Auschwitz museum, told AFP. “There will be no speeches by politicians,” he stressed.
According to the organisers, this could be the last major anniversary gathering with a large group of survivors.
“We all know that in ten years, for the 90th anniversary, it will no longer be possible to have such a large group,” Sawicki said.
Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany on six million European Jews, one million of whom died at the site between 1940 and 1945, along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.
“So that History does not forget us”
Before this 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, some forty survivors Nazi camps agreed to speak to AFP.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000In 15 countries, from Israel to Poland, from Russia to Argentina, from Canada to South Africa, they told their stories and posed for a photo, alone or surrounded by their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, proof of their victory over absolute evil.
They warned against the rise of hatred and anti-Semitism in the world and shared their fears of seeing History repeat itself.
Julia Wallach, almost a hundred years old, has trouble talking about the past without crying. “It's too hard to tell, too hard,” breathes this Parisian who survived two years at Birkenau where a Nazi made her get off a truck at the last minute to a room in gas.
Although it is difficult for her to relive these horrors, she has decided to continue to bear witness. “As long as I can do it, I will do it,” she insists. At her side, her granddaughter Frankie wonders: “When she is no longer here, will people want to believe us when we talk about it” ?”
This is why Esther Senot, 97, went to Birkenau last month, accompanying French high school students. It was a promise she made in 1944 to her dying sister Fanny, who, lying on straw and coughing up blood, had asked her with her last breath to tell what had happened “so that History would not forget us”.
7,000 survivors
The camp was established in 1940 in barracks in Oswiecim, in the south of occupied Poland, whose name was Germanized to Auschwitz by the Nazis. The first 728 Polish political prisoners arrived there on June 14 of that year.
On January 17, 1945, in the face of advancing Soviet troops, the SS forced 60,000 emaciated prisoners to march westward in what would be called the “Death March.”
From January 21 to 26, the Germans blew up the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau and withdrew.
On January 27, Soviet troops arrived and found 7,000 survivors. The day the camp was liberated was proclaimed by the United Nations as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Until the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Russian delegation had always attended the anniversary ceremonies, but for the past three years it has not been invited, a decision by the organizers strongly criticized by Moscow.
Rumours about the possible participation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the ceremonies have also sparked controversy.
Last year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Netanyahu, suspected of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
At the request of the Polish president Andrzej Duda, the Polish government confirmed last month that it would not arrest Mr Netanyahu if he visited Auschwitz, although it appears the Israeli leader has no intention of coming. Israel will be represented by its Education Minister Yoav Kisch.