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Inside the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation
On Monday, 27th January 2025, some of the world’s most powerful people – monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers – filled a tent constructed over the infamous Auschwitz II “Death Gate” in Birkenau, Poland.
Yet these figures had come not to speak, but to listen. For the focus was on the survivors of Auschwitz, those who had endured the unimaginable, and who on the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation had so bravely returned to share their thoughts and perspectives. As a spokesman for the Auschwitz Memorial told the JTA, this year’s event was “the last [with] a visible group of survivors. And this is why it is so important to put the entire spotlight on the survivors.” In the end, 62 of them attended, according to the Memorial.
The representation of a train track cut through the middle of the tent, reminding us of this common method for deportation to the camp in which over a million people are estimated to have been murdered.
What can one say about Auschwitz that has not previously been expressed? I can offer no groundbreaking insight, but clearly Auschwitz is a place that opens up a well of emotions. To witness the barbed wire, the watchtowers, the barracks, the train tracks and the “Judenrampe” with its cattle cars, makes you stop and wonder: how did the local population, or anybody with a heart and soul, fail to intervene and let this happen? The answer, memorably summarised by historian Ian Kershaw and repeated by the ceremony’s speakers, was indifference.
It is this that King Charles III warned of earlier on the 27th, in a speech at a Jewish community centre in Kraków: we must never “be a bystander in the face of violence and hate”. The King attended the ceremony at Auschwitz, becoming the first British monarch to visit the camp. He appeared visibly moved, with British media picking up on his wiping away a tear while listening to the words of Holocaust survivors.
The King was joined by representatives of over 50 countries, including leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has described the killing of his own Jewish great-grandparents by the Nazis. Despite it being the Red Army that liberated Auschwitz on January 27th, 1945, there was no Russian delegation present.
Throughout there was haunting and moving music by composers such as James Simon, a German Jew who was murdered in an Auschwitz gas chamber. His “Lament” set the tone for the evening. Archive photos were also displayed; importantly, though, the presence of survivors showed that the events of the Holocaust are not ancient history. For these people, the functioning factory of death of Auschwitz is within living memory.
Those gathered were welcomed by Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski (born in 1926). While he understood the attention shown to survivors, he felt that “we should turn our thoughts toward the overwhelming majority, toward those millions of victims who will never tell us what they experienced, because they were swallowed up by the Shoah”. But, concluding with a message of hope, he cited the phrase attributed to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov: “Kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od v’ha’ikar lo l’fached klal!”. Our entire world is like a very narrow bridge. And the main thing is do not be afraid at all!”. Let us not be afraid, Mr Turski urged, despite the rise in antisemitism, to stand up to conspiracy theories; to talk about the problems troubling what is called the “Last Generation”; to convince ourselves that problems can be resolved between neighbours and different ethnic groups.
Survivor Janina Iwańska (born in 1930) gave a history of the Auschwitz camp and its development. She remembered her time in the “killing machine”, seeing the callous experiments of Josef Mengele (known as “The Angel of Death”) including on newborn babies. These experiences were built upon by survivor Tova Friedman (born in 1938): “I represent the children…From my town, four children survived”. Her own childhood was taken from her. When in the camp her mother pointed to the smoke coming from the chimneys, “I knew, at five and a half years old, what that meant”. She recalled being beaten mercilessly by a guard for not being able to stand still for hours straight at a rollcall. Her memories of watching little girls, six or seven years old, marched crying to the gas chamber were simply yet eloquently expressed and laid bare the sheer brutality of the camp.
Ms Friedman prayed for “strength, resilience, and of course hope”. She told those assembled that “we all must reawaken our collective conscience to transform the violence, anger, hatred, and malignancy that has so powerfully gripped our society into a more humane and just world. It’s an enormous task.” She echoed the words of Rabbi Tarfon (Pirkei Avos 2:15): “The time is short, and the task is great. We may not be able to complete it, but we are obligated to start”.
The last Auschwitz survivor to speak was 99-year-old Leon Weintraub (born in 1926), who when liberated weighed 35 kilograms and had typhus. He advised us to “be attentive and vigilant” when it comes to rooting out hatred.
After the speeches, the shofar was sounded and a group of rabbis recited Kaddish and Psalm 42. Among them was the UK’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who emphasised earlier in Kraków that “there is a future where we fail our children and our grandchildren because we don’t learn from the lessons of the past […] But there is a better future if we translate remembrance into meaningful and decisive action.”
To conclude the event, survivors and heads of national delegations lit candles at a historic train wagon in front of the “Death Gate”. Beyond the memorial purpose, the symbolism was clear: on top of the train track, at this place of darkness, destruction, and industrial murder, was a sea of trembling lights.
But the enduring image for me was of the last survivor in the line, an elderly woman, who wept bitterly when the time came to set her candle down. With six million lives extinguished, some wounds can never be healed. Yet what we can do is to listen to the survivors; take heed of the lessons they teach us; and strive for such a catastrophe to never happen again. As the Chief Rabbi put forward, “There is a better future if we are willing together to create it.”
