Holocaust survivors, heads of state, and other dignitaries will gather on Monday at Auschwitz-Birkenau to commemorate the roughly 1.1 million victims murdered by the Nazis in the concentration camp.
Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk will be present, as will the United Kingdom’s King Charles III, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, and Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch, among others.
Despite the inmates being liberated by the Red Army eight decades ago, no Russian delegation will participate in the ceremony due to Russia’s war with Ukraine.
When walking through Auschwitz’s main gate, guests will see the freight train used to transport thousands of people to the camp, where most of them were murdered by gassing and their bodies cremated.
Few among them were deemed fit for slave labor. As the famous cynical slogan on the camp gate reads, Arbeit macht frei (work sets you free), this so-called freedom often translated to death.
While Jews were the largest group of victims, others, including Poles, Russian prisoners of war, Roma and Sinti, and homosexuals, were also marked for annihilation.
The last of its kind
Hugo Lowy, a Jewish-Romanian, was among those who were “set free.” He was beaten to death in 1944 by SS men on the ramp after he refused to leave his tefillin and tallit behind.
The train car that transported him and others to the death camp was preserved thanks to the support of his son, Australian businessman Frank Lowy, and will be the one visitors see.
The chilling reminder of how “German Nazis brought people here,” as Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, put it, is essential during a time when the reality of the Second World War is becoming a distant memory and very few witnesses are still alive to tell the tale.
Auschwitz survivor Michael Bornstein said this commemoration will be the last of its kind. “We will be there. Will you stand with us?”
Holocaust survivor Simon Gronowski, 93, jumped from the transport that carried his mother and sister from Brussels to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.
“I want to inform young people about the barbarism of yesterday to defend our democracy today,” he said.Bornstein and Gronowski will be joined by roughly 50 other survivors – Jews and non-Jews – in an effort to preserve and share history before it is too late.
On Monday, survivors and visitors will recite the morning prayers together before they take part in the commemoration events.
One delegation includes philanthropist Robert Frederick Smith, CNN host Van Jones, and Rev. Carl Day, who are African-Americans.
Director-General Jack Simony of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF), which maintains the sole surviving synagogue in Oswiecim, now at the Oshpitzin Jewish Museum, said it’s important survivors and delegation members interact.
“This is a Black-Jewish solidarity trip,” Simony told The Jerusalem Post about this year’s AJCF’s visit.He emphasized the importance of building bridges between both communities, saying that they shared a long history of oppression and are leading the fight to end it.
“I was not aware how deep Polish-Jewish connections really are,” Simony added, noting the profound work done by the AJCF’s director in Poland, Tomasz Kuncewicz, and others who devoted their lives to the study of the Holocaust and preserving the Jewish legacy in their country.
Polish television network Telewizja Polska (TVP) will offer live coverage of the daylong events. These are set to include interviews with Polish survivor Stanislaw Zalewski, a 99-year-old former inmate of the Gusen concentration camp in Austria, Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan, and The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer.TVP’s CEO Tomasz Sygut said this is “the last milestone anniversary” with Holocaust survivors.
Glazer’s film depicts the seemingly ideal lives of Auschwitz camp Commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his family, who live “as the Führer wanted” on the land conquered by the Third Reich in the east.
It is built on the often-repeated warning by Hannah Arendt about “the banality of evil” – a concept that ties into the notion that Nazi crimes were made possible due to the high degree of separation between the perpetrators themselves and the people who benefited from the atrocities committed.