Reportage
Auschwitz 80 years later, the return of the witnesses is a warning forever
Memory and current events were intertwined, together with appeals for an end to the current wars and warnings against extreme right-wingers on the rise.
One after another, heads of states and government and even kings, such as the UK’s Charles III and Felipe of Spain, lit a candle for the victims. They walked in silence. The representatives of 50 countries present at the commemoration ceremony that had begun more than two hours earlier, at 4 p.m., also sat in silence throughout. Although their presence was announced with plenty of noise and fanfare from the very early morning and into the evening, with car sirens sounding throughout Krakow and police and checkpoints spread out along the route from the city to the camp, it was not their time to speak on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops.
The survivors were the ones who gave the speeches, and they also lit candles amid tears at the end of the commemoration, many wearing the striped cap that had marked their captivity. Four were scheduled to speak among those few who are still alive – “only a handful” as one of them would say – and won’t give up on keeping alive a memory that seems to be playing awful tricks on some, although certainly not on them. They gave their testimony once again, right in front of the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau, at the “gate of death,” remembering the horror.
The large tent set up to accommodate the international delegations along with the survivors and their family members opened up towards that most grim facade of the giant extermination machine where more than a million Jews were murdered. A train car was set up next to the entrance. Watching outside, on the grass growing between the death camp barracks, where screens were broadcasting images of the ceremony, were people who had arrived from many European cities, from Israel, from the United States. They carried flags, white flowers, photos of relatives who did not survive the extermination. There were both elderly and young people, students applauding and following the testimonies with interest and concern.
Inside, memory and current events were intertwined, together with appeals for an end to the current wars and warnings against extreme right-wingers on the rise. Taking the floor first was Marian Turski, a death march survivor: 99 years old, he slowly approached the lectern while supporting himself with two walking sticks. A Polish historian and journalist and member of the International Committee of the Auschwitz Museum, he was the first among the speakers to sound the alarm about the return of anti-Semitism: “a tsunami,” he called it, quoting the words of U.S. historian Deborah Lipstadt, whom he held up as an example of bravery in fighting anti-Semitism. “Let us not be afraid to show the same courage today, when Hamas tries to deny the massacre of October 7,” he added, while reiterating the call for an end to all wars.
Another survivor, Leon Weintraub, who was liberated in 1945 in Offenburg, addressed the world leaders who filled the large tent – everyone from Mattarella to Macron, German President and Chancellor Steinmeier and Scholz, and the Ukrainian Zelensky, all present in the front rows. Weintraub, a physician of Polish descent, who has also just turned 99, gave a stern warning that commemorating the liberation of the largest Nazi death camp “serves as a reminder of the inhumane treatment of the individual, but it is also a warning against the increasingly vocal movements of the radical and anti-democratic right.”
“Let us take seriously what the enemies of democracy preach. They generally seek to implement the slogans they promote if they succeed in gaining power. We must avoid the mistake of the 1930s when the world failed to take seriously the Nazi regimes, and the plans to create a state free of Jews and Roma and people of different opinions or sick or those deemed unfit to live were underestimated. Therefore, I implore everybody to intensify their efforts in countering the views that led to the genocide we are commemorating today.”
In the morning, German Chancellor Scholz had written on X that “we’ll never forget [the victims]. Not today, not tomorrow,” in a message that seemed to allude to Elon Musk; unbelievably, even on this day the latter was not forgotten, after his recent outlandish interview with AfD leader Alice Weidel in which he claimed Hitler was actually a Communist and his remarks at the AfD campaign rally in which he said that “there is too much of a focus on past guilt” in Germany and that they “should move beyond that.”
President Steinmaier was even more explicit in his condemnation of that notion: “What happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau and other German concentration camps under Nazi rule is part of our history and, hence, part of our identity, which we must confront. … I believe Mr. Musk is not waiting for my advice. But my conviction remains: responsibility knows no end. Those who believe one can now draw a line under this should come here and seek conversations with survivors.”
The survivors’ speeches continued with Tova Friedman, deported at age 5 and a half to Auschwitz-Birkenau, who recalled those terrible days and that foul-smelling black smoke: “I knew at 5 and a half what that meant. We all knew.” And she commemorated all the little girls selected for the gas chambers, as everyone focused on the big screen with pained expressions.
Friedman, who emigrated to the U.S. and became a psychotherapist, like others before her, also spoke of a “shocking” rise in “extremism and rampant anti-Semitism” spreading worldwide, and also spoke of Israel “fighting for its very existence and its way of life. We mourn not only the fallen soldiers and hostages, but also the turbulence and mistrust.”
Another survivor, Janina Iwanska, pointed out that, even amid the optimism after WWII had ended and the rise of the slogan “Never Again,” “there were people who foresaw that what had happened during the Second World War could quite possibly happen again, since people had become so inhumane that it was very likely to repeat itself.”
Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz Museum, concluded the ceremony with a speech on the power of memory: “Memory hurts. Memory helps. Memory guides. Memory warns. Memory raises awareness. Memory obliges.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/aushwitz-80-anni-dopo-il-ritorno-dei-testimoni-e-un-monito-per-sempre on 2025-01-28