Eighty years later, the world commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday, with ceremonies at the site of this former German Nazi camp bringing together around fifty survivors.
On Monday morning, former detainees accompanied by Polish President Andrzej Duda laid flowers in front of the Death Wall of the camp where the detainees were shot.
Some survivors wore blue and white striped caps and scarves to symbolize their old prison uniforms. At the foot of the wall they lit candles in memory of the dead and then silently touched the wall with one hand.
Later in the day, survivors will attend the main ceremony, along with dozens of leaders.
According to the organizers, the ceremony will “focus on the survivors and their messages” and four of them will speak – Marian Turski, Tova Friedman, Leon Weintraub and Janina Iwanska.
In an interview with AFP at the beginning of the month, the latter, aged 94, recalled her arrival at Auschwitz: “I got off the train and saw the pits where human bodies were burned because the crematorium furnaces could not keep up.”
“When I came back from deportation, I weighed 28-30 kilos…” explained Léon Placek, 91, a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen camp, where he was deported, during an exchange with high school students in France on Monday morning. aged 10 with mother and brother.
The streets of Auschwitz were deserted, the grounds of Auschwitz were closed to the public, plunged into deep silence, except for the rustling of the flags of the Auschwitz museum, striped like the prisoners’ clothing.
Despite the significant presence of international delegations at Auschwitz, “there will be no speeches by politicians”, museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told AFP, adding that this could be the last major anniversary to bring together a large group of survivors.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and King Charles III, as well as German Chancellor and President Olaf Scholz and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, are taking part in the ceremony, held under a tent at the entrance to Birkenau, in the presence of 54 international delegations. .
Israel will be represented by its Education Minister Yoav Kisch and Ukraine by President Volodymyr Zelenskyi.
Earlier in the morning, Mr Zelenskiy, himself of Jewish descent, called on the world to “stop evil from winning”, referring to Russia.
Before going to Auschwitz, King Charles III. met survivors and visited the Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Krakow, southern Poland, which he inaugurated 17 years ago.
As the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, he said, “the responsibility for memory falls much more on our shoulders and on the shoulders of future generations.”
Auschwitz-Birkenau became a symbol of Nazi Germany’s genocide of six million European Jews, one million of whom died there between 1940 and 1945, along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.
“So that history does not forget us”
Before this 80E anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, about forty survivors of the Nazi camps agreed to speak to AFP.
In 15 countries, from Israel to Poland, from Russia to Argentina, from Canada to South Africa, they told their stories and took pictures, alone or surrounded by their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as proof of their victory over absolute evil. .
They warned of the rise of hatred and anti-Semitism in the world and shared their fears of history repeating itself.
Julia Wallach, an almost hundred-year-old Parisian who survived two years in Birkenau, where the Nazi forced her to get off the truck destined for the gas chamber at the last minute, continues her testimony.
“As long as I can, I’ll do it,” he insists. Next to him, his granddaughter Frankie asks: “When he’s gone, will people want to believe us when we talk about this? »
This is why Esther Senot, 97, went to Birkenau last month accompanied by French high school students.
It was a promise she made in 1944 to her dying sister Fanny, who, lying on straw and spitting blood, asked her with her last breath to tell what had happened “so that history does not forget us”.
7000 survivors
The camp was established in 1940 in the Auschwitz barracks in occupied southern Poland, whose name the Nazis Germanized to Auschwitz. The first 728 Polish political prisoners arrived there on June 14 of the same year.
From January 21 to 26, 1945, the Germans blew up the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau and retreated.
On January 27, Soviet troops arrived and found 7,000 survivors.
The day of the liberation of the camp was declared by the United Nations as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Until the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Russian delegation had always attended the anniversary celebrations, but was not invited for three years, a decision by the organizers strongly criticized by Moscow.
In a statement released by the Kremlin on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid tribute to Soviet soldiers who defeated “terrible and utter evil” by liberating the camp.
French President Emmanuel Macron vowed in Paris on Monday that his country would “give nothing in the face of anti-Semitism in all its forms”.
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