Auschwitz survivors warned of the dangers of rising antisemitism on Monday, as world leaders gathered to mark 80 years since the Nazi German death camp was liberated by the Soviet Army in 1945.
Auschwitz survivors warned of the dangers of rising antisemitism on Monday, as world leaders gathered to mark 80 years since the Nazi German death camp was liberated by the Soviet Army in 1945.
By Rob Harris
January 28, 2025 — 3.23am
Oswiecim, Poland: Survivors of a notorious Nazi death camp have warned a global rise in antisemitism was laying fertile ground for another Holocaust, as world leaders gathered to mark 80 years since Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by the Soviet Army in 1945.
Marian Turski, who was 14 when he was forced to the Lodz Ghetto and then deported to Auschwitz where his brother and father were murdered, used his speech to condemn a “huge rise in antisemitism” around the world since the outbreak of war in the Middle East 15 months ago.
The focus of the milestone commemoration in Poland was on the survivors, most in their late 80s or 90s, who spoke movingly of their own tales of endurance and hope, of the despair of losing loved ones, as well as a sense of incredulity at the efficiency of the Nazi state-sanctioned killing machine.
Turski, 98, said: “Today and now we see a huge rise in antisemitism and that is the precise antisemitism which led to the Holocaust.”
“Let us oppose the conspiracy theories saying all the evil of this world results from a plot started by some indefinite social groups, and Jews are often mentioned as one such group,” he said.
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Survivors wrapped in winter coats, some wearing blue-and-white striped scarves that recalled their prison uniforms, nodded and applauded. Some sat with their eyes closed, others held their heads in their hands.
A Polish historian and journalist, Turski called for dialogue in front of gathered monarchs, presidents, prime ministers, saying: “Let us not be afraid to convince ourselves that we cannot solve problems between neighbours.”
“All the hatred and hate speech led to armed conflicts between those neighbouring peoples and ethnic groups. That always ended in bloodshed.”
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He said thoughts should go to those “millions of victims who will never tell us what they experienced or felt”.
Tova Friedman, an 86-year-old survivor, recalled the horror of watching girls being taken to the gas chambers, “crying and shivering” as they walked barefoot in the snow.
“We were victims in a moral vacuum but today we have an obligation, not only to remember, which is very important, but also to warn and to teach that hatred only begets hatred, killing more killing,” she said.
“We must all reawaken our collective conscience to transform this hatred that has so powerfully ripped our society.”
A day of solemn ceremony, shadowed by a resurgence of nationalism from several European countries and a global rise in antisemitism, began near a former gas chamber and crematory in the Polish town of Oswiecim, 44km where more than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered.
Around 50 elderly camp survivors walked together to the Death Wall, lighting candles, in a courtyard between two red-brick former barracks.
The wall, flanked on one side by a building in which SS physicians conducted gruesome and often fatal experiments on female inmates, is where prisoners and Polish resistance fighters were executed by the Nazis. Bullet holes are still visible.
Poland’s president Andrzej Duda, whose nation lost six million citizens during the war, spoke poignantly about the importance of protecting the memory of those who were murdered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
“We Poles, on whose land occupied by Nazis Germans at that time they built this extermination industry and this concentration camp, are today the guardians of memory,” Duda told reporters.
The camp was created in 1940 by the Nazis on the site of a former Polish army barracks in Oswięcim, German-occupied southern Poland. Its name was Germanised into Auschwitz by the Nazis.
The Soviet Red Army troops arrived here on January 27, 1945, helping uncover one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by and against mankind. That date was formally designated Holocaust Memorial Day by a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2005.
Speaking at the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow before the memorial, King Charles warned of the risks “when evil is allowed to flourish”.
On the eve of the war 56,000 Jews lived in Krakow, but when Nazi Germany was defeated only about 4000 Jews remained in the city. The community centre now has 1000 Jewish members including 58 Holocaust survivors, and is the heart of Krakow’s growing Jewish community.
“It is a moment when we recall the depths to which humanity can sink when evil is allowed to flourish, ignored for too long by the world,” he said.
Representatives from Moscow were banished from anniversary events since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which the Kremlin justified on the false pretext that Ukraine, whose president is Jewish, was run by Nazis.
Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, criticised organisers, telling them that “your lives, jobs, entertainment, and the very existence of your people, your children have been paid for with the blood of Soviet soldiers who defeated the Third Reich.”
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Rob Harris is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
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