Oswiecim, Poland — The 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces is being marked Monday at the site of the former death camp, a celebration widely treated as the last major commemoration any notable number of survivors will be able to attend.
Nazi German forces killed about 1.1 million people at the site in southern Poland, which was under German occupation during World War II. Most of the victims were Jews who were killed on an industrial scale in gas chambers, but the Germans also killed many Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, and others targeted by Nazi racist ideology.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, whose country lost 6 million citizens during the war, placed a candle on the Wall of Death, where prisoners were executed, including Poles who resisted the occupation of their country. He was surrounded by elderly survivors of the camp with the help of family members.
In all, the Germans killed 6 million Jews from all over Europe, exterminating two-thirds of European Jews and one-third of Jews worldwide. In 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Later in the day, world leaders and members of the royal family will join elderly survivors at the camp, the youngest of whom are in their eighties. However, politicians were not asked to speak this year. Given the advanced age of the survivors, organizers chose to make them the center of the celebrations.
Among the leaders expected to attend are German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Germany has never sent two senior state representatives to attend the celebrations before, according to the German news agency DPA.
It is a sign of Germany’s continued commitment to taking responsibility for the crimes committed by the country, even amid a growing far-right movement that it would like to forget.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will also attend, while Britain’s King Charles III will also attend alongside the kings and queens of Spain, Denmark and Norway.
Russian actors have in the past been chief guests at celebrations commemorating the Soviet liberation of the camp on January 27, 1945, and the heavy losses suffered by Soviet forces in the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany. But they have not been as welcome since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
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2025-01-27 08:18:00
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