AUSCHWITZ – Auschwitz survivors and world leaders marked the 80th anniversary of the Nazi death camp’s liberation on Monday, warning that antisemitism is not a remnant of the past and pledging to confront hatred.
“We are here to proclaim and pledge that we will never allow history to repeat itself,” Holocaust survivor Tova Friedman said.
She said she sees the liberation date as her birthday, and that many of her friends aren’t even aware she has a regular one.
“Am I the only Jewish child left in the world?” she remembered asking herself after all her childhood friends were sent to the camps when she was in hiding, terrified. She was six years old when the Red Army freed her.
Friedman recalled being frightened of the German shepherd guard dogs and being beaten by the SS men when she and her mother were sent to Auschwitz.
“I thought that we all had to die, that it was normal. That if you’re a Jewish child you have to die. I didn’t even know what Jewish was, as I never saw any celebrations,” she said.
“I did not know anything about the Warsaw Uprising or the invasion of Normandy. We were victims in a moral vacuum,” she said. “Our revenge was to build a strong Jewish state and wonderful families... Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is struggling for its life. We pray for strength and hope.”
Survivors' words
Polish President Andrzej Duda, who knelt in front of wreaths and flickering candles laid by survivors and other dignitaries to mark the 80th anniversary, spoke of his country’s responsibility to the victims.
“We know today these camps were built to exterminate the Jewish people,” he said, noting that three million Jewish victims of Nazi Germany had been Polish citizens. “In this place the Germans built a death industry and we Poles guard this memory.”
Duda suggested that, in that sense, “we are Pilecki’s heirs.”
Witold Pilecki was a war hero who entered Auschwitz on a mission to learn what was taking place there and report back to the Polish Home Army and the West.
“Now Poland looks after these sites, so that memory is kept alive and the world never allows such a catastrophe of humanity to reoccur,” the Polish leader said.
Survivor and Polish historian Marian Turski quoted, in Hebrew, the words of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov to the gathered dignitaries.
“All the world is a narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to be afraid,” he said.
Turski urged the leaders assembled to confront fear, hate speech, growing nationalism, and those who wish to wipe out the Jewish state – like Hamas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Britain’s King Charles III, and French leader Emmanuel Macron were in the audience.
Polish survivor Janina Iwanska shared how Auschwitz began as a camp for political prisoners, mostly Poles who were “unhappy with the German occupation,” then Polish boys who were scouts, and then Red Army prisoners of war who were subject to cruel medical experiments.
“The operators of the camp wanted to learn which gas is most efficient in killing,” she said.
Only at this point, it was no longer a camp for Soviet soldiers or political prisoners, and all the inmates in it were meant to be killed.
“People would be brought here from other countries and they would be driven immediately to the gas chambers,” she said.
“It is estimated that one million Jews were murdered here,” she said, noting that “nobody knows exactly how many people were murdered in this place.”
She described the medical experiments Josef Mengele conducted on newborns and Roma people and the mass slaughter of all Roma after he “no longer needed material” to examine.
A resident of Warsaw, Iwanska was taken to Auschwitz following the Nazi suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.
“When the war ended in 1945, people were euphoric, Picasso painted a dove of peace. Yet there were people who predicted that it is impossible for these things never to happen again because people became so inhuman that it may yet happen once more,” she told the gathered leaders.
Lodz-born Holocaust survivor Leon Weintraub described the “thick, stinking smoke” produced by the ovens, hunger, and being beaten with wooden clubs.
The oldest living survivor today, he weighed 35 kg. when he was liberated. He left Poland due to state antisemitism in 1969 and built a new life, with his family, in Sweden.
“It pains me to see in many European countries, and also in Poland, people with Nazi symbols. These ideas murdered millions who were seen as subhuman under the sign of the Swastika,” he said. “Let us take seriously what the enemies of democracy say and prevent them from carrying out their plans.”
Ronald S. Lauder mentioned late Holocaust survivor Roman Kent who, in 2005, stood where Lauder was and said: “We don’t want our past to be our children’s future.”
One of the biggest donors to Jewish education, Lauder reminded the audience that Israeli children were murdered by Hamas terrorists not 80 years ago, but 15 months ago.
“This is the same age-old hatred which led here,” he said.
Lauder mentioned the first time he visited Auschwitz and met Elie Wiesel. Wiesel told Lauder then that the opposite of love is not hate, but silence.
It was the silence of the world, Lauder said, that made it possible for Hitler to murder millions, Jews and non-Jews alike.
“When Global Intifada says ‘Death to Israel,’ what they really mean is ‘Death to Western Culture,’” he said. Warning that among Americans under 30, only 40% believe Israel has a right to exist.
“Stop this now,” he urged, “before it is too late.”
Yad Vashem Director Dani Dayan told Polish Television that survivors are a “bridge that begins in our living room and ends in Auschwitz.”
“They have no substitute,” he said.
Dayan warned that we are facing a time in the very near future when “Holocaust deniers and distorters” will feel they are able to operate without fear of ever meeting a survivor who might put them to shame.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch, who wore an Israeli flag pin label, said “the fight to educate will never stop.”
He pointed to recent protests against Israel held on US campuses as evidence that antisemitism is not a thing of the past and lauded the Polish nation for its efforts to present history to the entire world.
“In every conflict where terrorists are involved, there is an attempt to use [the term] genocide,” Kisch said. He said this word ought to be used in very rare cases.
“Even what Israel experienced on October 7 is but one day during the Holocaust,” the minister said, noting that the recent tragedy cannot be compared to what took place 80 years ago.
Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan called antisemitism “the oldest form of hatred” and emphasized how important it is to learn about the Holocaust in light of the city’s vibrant Jewish community.
“To see numbers on the hand of a Holocaust survivor is the best antidote to hate,” Kahn said. “All this happened in their lifetime... It is not just the responsibility of Jewish people; it is our collective responsibility to make sure it would never happen again.”
Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, chairwoman of March of the Living International Advisory Board, wore a yellow ribbon pin for the hostages when she spoke about how necessary it is to visit Auschwitz to learn “what could happen if man’s responsibility to man is left unchecked.”
“With my eyes, I witnessed the gas chambers,” she said. “We educate [people that] it did happen, and if you don’t stand up to evil it could happen again.
“You must seize the chance to make a change in the global discourse which is now very bad, especially for Holocaust survivors who say they now realize nobody learned [that lesson].”
Polish Culture and National Heritage Minister Hanna Wróblewska said Poland is also the location of other camps beyond Auschwitz, such as Treblinka and Majdanek.
“We must look after these sites and permit them to pass on their testimonies during a time in which witnesses are vanishing,” she said.