Survivors mark 80th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation – DW (English)

January 27, 2025

How the camp changed into ‘killing machine’

Another survivor, Janina Iwanska, has told the commemoration audience about the way that the camp operated over the years from a camp for political prisoners into a place of death on an industrial scale. 

“This camp changed significantly. Originally, it was a camp for political prisoners people who were not happy with the German occupation. These were mostly Poles. Mostly adults.”

“For a time, most of the inmates were Poles here. Then, this camp turned into a camp for Soviet POWs. Tens of thousands of POWs were moved here.”

Some of the Soviet and Polish inmates who preceded the Jewish victims of the camps were used “to test various killing gasses to see which gas would be most efficient.”

Later, prisoners were moved to build the gas chambers and crematoria through harsh winter conditions.

“This is when the killing machine started its operation.”

“It is difficult to calculate all the people killed here. Most would be registered, but many a time, people would be brought in here from other countries and they would be driven directly to the gas chambers and crematoria.”

“It is estimated that around a million Jews were murdered this way. So they would be taken directly from the ramp to the gas chambers. Nobody knows exactly how many people died here.”

January 27, 2025

Auschwitz survivor urges remembrance of victims whose stories went untold

Holocaust survivor Marian Turski welcomed all guests to the memorial commemoration event, but said his warmest thoughts and feelings were with “my fellow men and women who have shared this misery with me, the inmates.”

“Today we commemorate the International Day of Remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust,” said Turski.

“It is absolutely understandable if not downright obvious that people, that the media, turn to us to those who survived so that we share with them our memories.”

Turski pointed out that only a minority of people in the death camps survived the Nazi atrocities, disease and starvation that accompanied life there.

“That number itself was very little and those who lived to see freedom there were hardly any, so few, and now there is only a handful. Such a small number.”

“That is why I believe our thoughts now should go to this huge majority, those millions of victims who will never tell us what they experienced, what they felt, just because they were consumed by that mass destruction, the Shoah.”

January 27, 2025

Fears about ‘memory culture’ as generations change

Speaking from the site of the former camp, DW reporter Giulia Saudelli observed that the number of survivors attending such events was dwindling as they passed away. 

As a result, she said, there were fears at today’s commemoration that memories of the Holocaust would be lost.

“We’re seeing some of the remaining survivors coming here today to remember and, for them, it is a very difficult step to make they’re coming from a place that was hell for them.

The number of these survivors is gradually decreasing because so much time has gone by.”

“This also raises concerns with many in terms of what is going to happen once none of these survivors are still going to survive in terms of memory culture — of, for example, helping younger generations understand the atrocities that were committed here at Auschwitz.”

January 27, 2025

Kremlin leader praises Soviet role in ending ‘total evil’

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has praised the role of Soviet soldiers in ending the “total evil” of Auschwitz.

While Russian representatives were in the past central guests at the anniversary observances, they have not been welcome since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

This year, 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.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a briefing Thursday: “There is something that needs to be said to the organizers and all the Europeans who will be there: your lives, your work and leisure, the very existence of your nations, your children have been paid for by Soviet soldiers, their lives, their blood.”

The Soviet Union, which included Russia and Ukraine among others, lost some 24 million soldiers and civilians in World War II, more than any other nation.
 

January 27, 2025

Survivors give harrowing accounts of Auschwitz suffering

Ahead of the commemoration at the former Nazi Auschwitz death camp, survivors have spoken about their experiences at the hands of their tormentors.

Around a million Jews, along with hundreds of thousands of other people, were killed or died under the atrocious conditions in the camp from 1940 until it was liberated by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.

“When I arrived in Auschwitz and got off the train, I saw the pits where human corpses were burned because the crematoria could not keep up,” Janina Iwanska, a 94-year-old Warsaw-born retired pharmacist, told the French AFP news agency earlier this month.

Iwanska, who is to speak at a ceremony commemorating the liberation of the camp on Monday, warned about threatening current developments in the world.

“I won’t live much longer. But when I look at the youth and the little ones … what will their future be? I see it as bleak,” she said, citing “hatred” and divisions in modern society and predicting another war.

Retired sociologist Teresa Regula arrived in Auschwitz as a 16-year-old.

“They shaved us down to bare skin, and it was a scorching hot day, August 4 … That was the first authentic pain I felt,” Regula, now 96 and living in Krakow, said in comments carried by the Reuters news agency.

“When I returned [from the camp], I thought ‘I’m never going to have children — ever. If they had to go through even a fraction of what I went through, I didn’t want that,” she said.

Hungarian survivor Susan Pollack, 94, who was sent to Auschwitz when she was 13, said she, her mother and brother were transported by cattle cart.

On arrival, her mother was murdered in the gas chambers while she was chosen to work, she said.

She said the Nazis shaved her hair and took her clothes, while the officers would select “who is to live, who is to die” by looking at their naked bodies.

“I became speechless, I couldn’t express myself, I couldn’t talk. I was frozen with fear,” she said.

Pollack was later sent to work as a slave laborer in an armaments factory in Guben, Germany, before ending up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The camp was liberated by the British army on April 15, 1945, saving her life.

January 27, 2025

Large UK-based Holocaust archive published online

The London-based Wiener Holocaust Library, one of the world’s largest Holocaust archives, has been published online for the first time, making more than 150,000 documents detailing Nazi Germany’s genocide of 6 million European Jews easily available to the public.

The library was founded in the early 1930s by Alfred Wiener, who gathered evidence of the persecution of Jews in Germany after fleeing the country. The documents it contains include photos, transcripts and testimonies.

“The need to defend the truth has been given new urgency by the resurgence of antisemitism and other forms of misinformation and hatred,” Toby Simpson, the director of the library, said in a press release on Monday.

“By placing a wealth of evidence freely available online we are ensuring that the historical record is available for all regardless of their location, prior knowledge or means,” he added.

The items in the library include photographs of Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp in then-occupied Poland where more than a million Jews died between 1940 and its liberation on January 27, 1945.

Israel’s national archives also said it would release hundreds of thousands of documents from the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann to the public. Eichmann was among the main organizers of the Holocaust.

Some 380,000 pages of “chilling testimony, correspondence, lists and photographs” were uploaded to the national archives’ website, the Israeli prime minister’s office said.

After World War II, Eichmann fled Europe to Argentina, living there under a fake identity until Israeli spies captured him in 1960. He was tried in Israel where he was found guilty of masterminding the implementation of the “final solution,” the Nazi’s plan to exterminate Jews.

Eichmann was executed in 1962.

January 27, 2025

Italy’s Meloni: Holocaust brutality ‘unparalleled’ in history

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has urged the people of the world to fight antisemitism in a statement commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“The premeditated savagery of the plan makes the Shoah an unparalleled tragedy in history,” the statement read, using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

She said Nazi Germany found the “complicity” of the fascist regime in Italy, which enacted a series of antisemitic racial laws in 1938 and collaborated in the deportation of Jews.

“Antisemitism was not defeated with the knocking down of the gates of Auschwitz. It is a plague that survived the Shoah,” Meloni said, while stressing that fighting antisemitism was a priority for her government.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party has its origins in the Italian Social Movement, founded by officials loyal to fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Meloni identifies as a “conservative” and has moderated her party’s rhetoric since becoming prime minister in 2022.

January 27, 2025

Poland’s Duda speaks of ‘unimaginable pain’ inflicted on Holocaust victims

Camp survivors have held a commemoration ceremony at the Death Wall, so named because it is where many prisoners were executed, including Poles who resisted the Nazi occupation of their country.

The survivors were accompanied by relatives, Polish President Andrzej Duda and Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum director Piotr Cywinski.

“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, who laid a wreath and lit a candle at the site, told reporters afterward.

Duda spoke of the “unimaginable pain” inflicted on so many, especially Jews.  

“May the memory of all the dead live on, may they rest in peace,” he said.

Poland lost 6 million citizens during World War II.

January 27, 2025

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy: ‘The crime of the Holocaust must never be repeated’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the world to fight to ensure that “evil does not prevail” as the memory of the horrors of the Holocaust seems to be “gradually fading.”

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Zelenskyy said the Holocaust “was the Nazis‘ deliberate attempt to erase an entire nation,” saying that “the evil that seeks to destroy the lives of entire nations still exists in the world today.”

“We must all fight for the sake of life and remember that indifference is the breeding ground for evil. We must overcome hatred, which leads to cruelty and murder. We must not allow forgetfulness to take root. And it is everyone’s mission to do everything possible to ensure that evil does not prevail,” he wrote.

Zelenskyy, who was born to Jewish parents, had several close relatives who were killed during the Holocaust.

The Ukrainian president is in Poland to attend commemoration events. During his visit, he will hold “bilateral meetings with European Council Chief Antonio Costa and French President Emmanuel Macron,” spokesman Sergiy Nykyforov said.

Ukraine is currently facing an invasion by Russian troops .

January 27, 2025

Focus to be ‘on survivors and their message’ at commemoration

World leaders attending commemorations on Monday at the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp will not themselves give speeches but rather listen to what survivors have to tell.

“This year we will focus on the survivors and their message,” Auschwitz Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told the French AFP news agency. “There will not be any speeches by politicians.”

“It is clear to all of us that this is the last milestone anniversary where we can have a group of survivors that will be visible who can be present at the site,” he said.

“In 10 years it will not happen and for as long as we can we should listen to the voices of survivors, their testimonies, their personal stories. It is something that is of enormous significance when we talk about how the memory of Auschwitz is shaped.”

According to organizers, four former inmates — Marian Turski, Janina Iwanska, Tova Friedman and Leon Weintraub — will speak at the main event.

The ceremony at the former concentration camp is expected to be attended by delegations from 55 countries. Among those present will be German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, King Charles III of the United Kingdom, Spain’s King Felipe VI and other crowned heads of state.

The main commemoration will begin at 1500 GMT in a tent built over the gate to the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.

In the morning, survivors will lay wreaths at the Wall of Death in the camp, where inmates were executed during the time of its operation.

January 27, 2025

Poland’s Tusk slams AfD slogans ahead of commemoration

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has criticized slogans heard at a rally of the far-right AfD party in Germany over the weekend, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The slogans “sounded all too familiar and ominous. Especially only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz,” Tusk, the former head of the EU Council, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.

Tusk said he was referring to “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.'”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded on his election campaign account on X by writing: “I couldn’t agree more, dear Donald.” 

The rally by the anti-immigration AfD on Saturday comes ahead of the German federal election on February 23. Opinion polls show the party with around 20% voter support, in second place to the conservative Christian Democrats, at 30%.

However, the party is unlikely to enter government, as all parties have so far ruled out a formal coalition.

January 27, 2025

Poland divided on pledge not to arrest Netanyahu

Earlier this month, the Polish government pledged not to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he attended Monday’s Auschwitz commemoration ceremony.

One of the first prominent critics of the government’s decision was a respected Polish judge, Piotr Hofmanski, a former International Criminal Court (ICC) president.

Hofmanski underlined Poland’s unconditional obligation under international law to execute the warrant. However, he stressed that the Polish authorities have not so far broken the law and would do so only if Netanyahu set foot on Polish soil but was not arrested.

The resolution pledging not to arrest him was also met with widespread opposition across the Polish political spectrum. Journalists, experts, bloggers, political commentators, judicial authorities and the opposition — from the far left to the far right — condemned the decision, albeit for different reasons.

In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

DW looks back at the heated debate in Poland triggered by the decision.

January 27, 2025

Poland promises not to arrest Netanyahu on ICC warrant

As world leaders, Holocaust survivors and others visit Poland, one prominent name will be missing from the official ceremony: that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The prime minister had not planned to take part in the ceremony in the first place, according to Israeli media, but that did not prevent some observers from thinking he would refrain from setting foot on Polish soil for legal reasons, based on reports in Poland.

This resulted in the Polish government announcing that it would allow Netanyahu — and, indeed, any other Israeli official — to visit the country for the anniversary without being arrested, triggering protests against the decision.

Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch is now expected to represent his country at the event.

In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Read DW’s report on what Israelis think of Poland’s position.

January 27, 2025

Auschwitz the scene of ‘unimaginable crimes against innocent people’

The Auschwitz concentration camp has become a symbol of the worst horrors humankind is capable of perpetrating.

DW’s Christoph Strack wrote an article describing conditions at the camp and the atrocities committed there by the Nazis, with heartbreaking accounts from survivors.

Read more here.

January 27, 2025

Berlin held ceremony on Thursday

A ceremony was held in Berlin on Thursday to commemorate the victims of Auschwitz. Among the speakers was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who called for a stronger stance against antisemitism. Watch DW’s report on the ceremony: