Auschwitz survivors warn ‘world has become toxic’ on 80th anniversary of death camp’s liberation

The 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops is being marked on Monday at the site of the former death camp, a ceremony that is widely being treated as the last major observance that any notable number of survivors will be able to attend.

Among those who was travelled to the site is 86-year-old Tova Friedman, who was six when she was among the 7,000 people liberated on Jan. 27, 1945. She believes it will be the last gathering of survivors at Auschwitz and she came from her home in New Jersey to add her voice to those warning about rising hatred and antisemitism.

“The world has become toxic,” she told The Associated Press a day before the observances in nearby Krakow. “I realize that we’re in a crisis again, that there is so much hatred around, so much distrust, that if we don’t stop, it may get worse and worse. There may be another terrible destruction.”

Nazi German forces murdered some 1.1 million people at the site in southern Poland, which was under German occupation during the Second World War. Most of the victims were Jews killed on an industrial scale in gas chambers, but also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, gay people and others who were targeted for elimination in the Nazi racial ideology.

Elderly camp survivors, some wearing blue-and-white striped scarves that recall their prison uniforms, walked together to the Death Wall, where prisoners were executed, including many Poles who resisted the occupation of their country.

They were joined by Polish President Andrzej Duda, whose nation lost six million citizens during the war. He carried a candle and walked with Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum director Piotr Cywinski. At the wall, the two men bowed their heads, murmured prayers and crossed themselves.

“We Poles, on whose land — occupied by Nazi Germans at that time — the Germans built this extermination industry and this concentration camp, are today the guardians of memory,” Duda said to reporters afterward.

He spoke of the “unimaginable harm” inflicted on so many people, especially the Jewish people.

‘Our duty … to remember’

In all, the Germans murdered six million Jews from all over Europe, annihilating two-thirds of Europe’s Jews and one-third of all Jews worldwide. In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Across Europe, officials and others were pausing to remember.

“As the last survivors fade, it is our duty as Europeans to remember the unspeakable crimes and to honour the memories of the victims,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is German, said on X.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who leads a nation defending itself against Russia’s brutal invasion, placed a candle at the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial a day before in Kyiv, where tens of thousands of Jews were executed during the Nazi occupation. On Monday he arrived in Poland to attend the commemorations.

“The evil that seeks to destroy the lives of entire nations still remains in the world,” he wrote on his Telegram page.

Commemorations will culminate later Monday when world leaders and royalty will join with elderly camp survivors, the youngest of whom are in their 80s, at Birkenau, the part of Auschwitz where the mass murder of Jews took place. 

Politicians, however, have not been asked to speak this year. Due to the advanced age of the survivors, about 50 of whom are expected, organizers are choosing to make them the centre of the observances. Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, will also speak.

World leaders attend, including Trudeau

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was expected to be in attendance. 

Before the ceremony, Trudeau met with Canadian Auschwitz survivors who also made the journey to Poland. This may be Trudeau’s last major international trip as prime minister before the next Liberal Party leader is chosen on March 9.

In a statement posted to X Sunday, Trudeau wrote, “80 years ago, the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration and extermination camp was liberated, ending the systematic murder and genocide carried out there by the Nazi regime.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll join fellow world leaders on the grounds of Auschwitz Birkenau to honour the victims of the Holocaust, stand against rising antisemitism and Holocaust denial, and reaffirm our promise: never again.”

Among other leaders expected to attend are Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Germany has never sent both of its highest state representatives to the observances before, according to German news agency dpa.

It is a sign of Germany’s continued commitment to take responsibility for the nation’s crimes, even with a far-right party gaining increased support in recent years.

French President Emmanuel Macron will attend after earlier observing a moment of silence at the Shoah Memorial in Paris, a symbolic tomb for the six million Jews who don’t have a grave, and meeting with a survivor from Auschwitz and one from the Bergen-Belsen camp.

Britain’s King Charles III will also be there, along with kings and queens from Spain, Denmark and Norway.

Russian representatives were in the past central guests at the anniversary observances in recognition of the Soviet liberation of the camp on Jan. 27, 1945, and the huge losses suffered by Soviet forces in the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany. But they have not been welcome since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Kremlin said that Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message to participants saying, “We will always remember that it was the Soviet soldier who crushed this dreadful, total evil and won the victory the greatness of which will forever remain in world history.” 

“Russian citizens are direct descendants and successors of the generation of victors,” Putin said. “We will continue to counter the attempts to rewrite the legal and moral verdict on the Nazi butchers and their abettors in a principled and firm manner.”