This event has now ended.
Auschwitz survivors warned of rising antisemitism and hatred in the modern world on Monday as they recounted the horrors they had witnessed at the Nazi death camp on the 80th anniversary of its liberation.
In what is likely to be one of the last gatherings of those who experienced its horrors, 56 people who were freed by Soviet Union troops on Jan. 27, 1945, were joined by dignitaries from around the world in a giant heated tent over the camp's gate for a ceremony to mark one of the world's worst atrocities.
Among those in attendance were German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Britain's King Charles III, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, along with many other leaders. Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch was also present.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, died in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz before Soviet troops arrived at the gates. Some 6 million Jews were killed across German-occupied Europe from 1941 to 1945.
Those attending the event listened to speeches from three people who survived.
Among them was the author Tova Friedman, who was just 5 years old when she was sent to the camp and lay among bodies to hide from Nazi soldiers rounding up other children.
Now 86, she said that she is still haunted by the memories she has of that time. “After all the children were gone and the courtyard was empty,” she said, “I thought to myself, ‘Am I the only Jewish child left in the world?’”
Leon Weintraub, 99, said his mother, sister and aunt were killed in a gas chamber shortly after they arrived at the camp.
Urging young people to be discerning in the new digital world and sensitive to expressions of intolerance and the resentment of marginalized people, he said the survivors understood “that the consequence of being considered different is active persecution, the effects of which we have personally experienced.”
Piotr M.A. Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, thanked the survivors for sharing their recollections.
“It is not the facts of the war that are painful, but the memories that hurt, help and guide us,” he said.
Ceremony concludes with survivors laying candles
The commemoration ceremony to remember the liberation of Auschwitz has ended.
But survivors, their relatives and dignitaries are laying candles on a table at the front of the tent where the event took place.
Jewish leaders recite the Kaddish and Psalm 42
Jewish leaders took to the stage to recite the Kaddish, a prayer praising God that is delivered during synagogue services.
This was followed by a reading of Psalm 42, a lament about an isolated believer who is longing for God’s presence.
Composition by Gideon Klein brings conclusion to the speeches
The music “Lullaby” by Jewish composer and pianist Gideon Klein brings the speeches to an end.
Klein, a Czech national, studied at the Prague Conservatory of Music while completing high school, according to a biography by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.
In October 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz, and then to the Fürstengrube subcamp, where he died in January 1945, it added.
Museum director thanks survivors for sharing their memories
Memory is the key to understanding the world and designing the future, Auschwitz Museum Director Piotr Cywiński said as he thanked the survivors of the camp for sharing their memories with the world.
“There are no words, dearest ones, to express the depth of our gratitude,” Cywiński said in his address.
As a man born after World War II, Cywiński said he learned the history of the camp but emphasized that a knowledge of facts is not the same as hearing the memories.
“It is not the facts of the war that are painful but the memories that hurt, help and guide us,” he said. “But what are we to do with this memory today?” he added. “If today, my friend, you feel uncertain about what to do, if you feel powerless, if you feel you cannot go on, then perhaps you have reached a limit.”
“If so, know that limits are only imaginary,” he said. “You can always do more.”
Lessons of Auschwitz are lessons 'for the entire world,' museum donor says
The lessons learned from Auschwitz and the Holocaust are “not just for Jews, they’re for the entire world,” philanthropist Ronald Lauder said in a speech on behalf of the museum's donors.
Lauder drew parallels from the rise of Nazi Germany to the issues of today, quoting survivor Elie Wiesel, who said, “Most people think the opposite of love is hate. It’s not, it’s indifference.”
The rise of the Nazis was a step-by-step process “advanced by the indifference” of people who thought they were unaffected by antisemitism, Lauder said.
“Today is the same story, silence, indifference and the exception of that this hatred,” Lauder said. “So today, all of us must take a pledge to never be silent when it comes to antisemitism or, for that manner, any other hatred.”
'Take seriously what the enemies of democracy preach,' Weintraub says
In a world where intentions can be hard to distinguish, Weintraub urged the world “to be sensitive to all expressions of intolerance and resentment to those who are different.”
For young people in a digitial world it can be difficult to discern true intention from “the pursuit of popularity,” he said, adding that it was time to “take seriously what the enemies of democracy preach.”
“We the survivors, we understand that the consequence of being considered different is active persecution, the effects of which we have personally experienced,” Weintraub told the crowd. “And we did experience in the very heart.”
Auschwitz stripped us of 'all humanity,' 99-year-old survivor recalls
Leon Weintraub, 99, was just a schoolchild when his family was moved into a ghetto following the Nazi invasion of Poland.
He told the crowd that after the ghetto was liquidated he was sent with his family to the Auschwitz camp, where his mother, sister and aunt were murdered in the gas chamber shortly after they arrived.
“We were stripped of all our humanity,” Weintraub said. “First, we were stripped naked and robbed of all our house belongings. Then they shaved all our hair, quite often with painful skin removal.”
He said he was “utterly alone” after the separation from his family, sneaking out weeks later. But he added that he was caught and forced into labor outside the camp until he was liberated by French troops.
One of the youngest survivors says she celebrates liberation like ‘this is my birthday’
One the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, Tova Friedman, was just 6 years old when Auschwitz was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945.
For her "whole life since I was a little girl," she thought of that day "as my birthday," she told the crowd. "I celebrate it every single year," she added.
Her memory of her time in the camp remains vivid in part because her mother validated her experiences at a young age, Friedman said, adding that she remembered listening to her friends being rounded up while the cries of their parents fell on deaf ears.
“After all the children were gone and the courtyard was empty,” she said. “I thought to myself, am I the only Jewish child left in the world?”
We have seen a 'huge rise in antisemitism,' Holocaust survivor warns
We have seen a “huge rise in antisemitism and that is precisely what led to the Holocaust,” Turski said, adding that we should not “fear discussing the problems that torment the so-called last generation.”
“Let us not be afraid to convince ourselves that we can solve problems between neighbors because for centuries on many continents, many nations, many peoples and many ethnic groups have lived and had their homes among one another and between one another,” he said.
“Luckily there are the positive experiences as well when both the sides reach the conclusion that they have no other way of securing a peaceful, safe and secure life for their children, grandchildren and for future generation than leading to a compromise,” he said.
Commemoration ceremony begins with music and a speech from a survivor
The commemoration ceremony has begun inside a heated tent covering the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Music by the German Jewish composer James Simon, who died in a gas chamber at the camp in 1944, opened the proceedings.
This was followed by a speech from survivor Marian Turski, who was 14 when he was forced into the Lodz Ghetto with his family. He survived two death marches, and at the end of the war he was liberated.
Turski paid tribute to the “millions of victims who will never tell us what they experienced or felt.” He also asked the crowd to stand up for a moment’s silence.