More than 50 world leaders, including King Charles III, will join a dwindling group of Nazi death camp survivors on Monday in southern Poland to mark the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, where More than 1.1 million peopleMost of them Jews were killed.
A solemn day of celebration, overshadowed by the resurgence of nationalism in Germany and many other European countries, will be held near a former gas chamber and crematorium in the Polish town of Oświęcim, whose German name was changed to Auschwitz during Hitler’s occupation of Hitler’s camp from 1939 to 1945. Poland.
Remembrance ceremonies will begin early Monday with Auschwitz survivors – who numbered in the thousands at the end of World War II in 1945 but most have since died – laying wreaths at the Wall of Death. wall, In the courtyard between the former barracks, prisoners were executed by SS guards, and there are still traces of bullet holes.
Ronald S. said: Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and head of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, said in an interview: “This is the most important anniversary we will have because of the shrinking number of survivors and because of what happened.” It’s happening in the world today.”
“We thought the virus of anti-Semitism was dead, but it was just hiding,” he said.
Fewer than 50 survivors will participate in the commemoration ceremony on Monday, less than half the number who attended the 75th anniversary. “In five years, there will be very few left,” Mr. Loder said. “And those who are still alive won’t have the energy to go.”
However, the number of prominent foreign dignitaries is constantly increasing. This year’s guest list, the largest ever, includes dozens of government leaders and no less than eight kings and queens. Among them are the late German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and its president Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Schulz’s likely successor, Friedrich Merz, is also expected.
With less than a month to go before Germany’s general election, Mr. Schulz, Mr. Merz and other key German politicians are seeking to limit support for the AfD, a far-right party known as the AfD that is widely seen as Extremist right-wing party. A dangerous throwback to the nationalism that brought Hitler to power in the 1930s.
At an election rally on Saturday in eastern Germany, politicians from the Alternative for Germany party said… Elon Musk, a senior adviser to President Trump, spoke via video linkHe urged Germans not to feel guilty about the crimes of their ancestors in the Nazi era.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Sunday that that and calls at the march for a “Greater Germany” sounded familiar and ominous, especially just hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
None of the leaders will speak at the event on Monday. As part of the anniversary events, the house where the Nazi commandant lived in Auschwitz with his family – and which was the subject of the Oscar-winning film “The Zone of Interest” – will open to visitors for the first time after it was sold by Poland. Owners of the Countering Extremism Project, a New York-based group.
Piotr Cywinski, a Polish historian and director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, said his state-run institution wanted to avoid political rhetoric and put survivors and commemoration of Nazi victims at the center of Monday’s events.
He said in an interview: “Memory is not just crying when you look at the past, and it is not just compassion when you look at the victims. That is not enough. I think memory is really the key to the time of day and the key to finding where you are today.”
An American delegation will be led by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, who played a key role in negotiating the recent truce agreement in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, and Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary. Also among the delegation was Charles Kushner, the father of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and whom Mr. Trump chose as ambassador to France.
Russia, which used to regularly participate in Auschwitz anniversary events, was not invited to this year’s celebrations, despite the Soviet army’s liberation of the camp in January 1945. Representatives from Moscow have been banned from attending anniversary events since the start of the war. The entire operation of Russia. A large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which the Kremlin justified under the false pretext that Ukraine, whose president was Jewish, was run by the Nazis. Ukraine was invited and will be represented by its President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has succeeded in turning the Soviet role in defeating Hitler into a national cult in which anyone at odds with the Kremlin is portrayed as a Nazi. The fact that the Soviet Union was a de facto ally of Hitler was not mentioned until 1941, when the Nazis began gassing Jews at Auschwitz. Moscow and Berlin signed the Non-Aggression Pact in 1939 which led to the invasion of Poland by Nazi and Soviet forces later that year.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized Polish organizers of Monday’s commemoration, telling them that “your lives, your jobs, your entertainment, the very existence of your people, your children have been paid for with the blood of Soviet soldiers who defeated Russia.” “Third Reich.”
Pro-Ukrainian voices on social media responded by claiming that Ukrainian forces, not Russians, liberated Auschwitz. The first troops to arrive at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination complex were from 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Fronta Soviet force comprising soldiers from all over the Soviet Union. They freed about 7,000 prisoners from the main camp at Auschwitz, from nearby Birkenau and from a concentration camp. Monowitz labor camp.
Political conflicts in the Middle East have also intervened, with pro-Palestinian activists demanding that Poland arrest members of the Israeli delegation, which is expected to be headed by Education Minister Yoav Kisch, over what they call “genocide” in Gaza. Last year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While Mr. Netanyahu was not expected to attend, the Polish government announced this month that all Israeli officials who attended would be safe from arrest.
Anatole Magdziarz He contributed reporting from Warsaw.
