As the world remembers Nazi death camps 80 years on, Auschwitz sets

Around 50 survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp will return to the site on Monday to commemorate the day it was finally liberated on January 27, 1945.

They will be joined by heads of state including King Charles and other European royals, France’s Emmanuel Macron and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

But it will be survivors – mostly in the late 1980s and 1990s – rather than dignitaries whose voices will be heard at commemorations at the camp, where 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered.

Their message is to tell the world what’s going on and make sure it never happens.

“Every soul on earth has the right to live,” said Jona Laks, 94, who arrived in 1944 with her twin and elder sisters . “Auschwitz was a laboratory for the murder of people. This was its mission, and the facts have proven themselves: there are very few Auschwitz camps.”

Although daytime temperatures have exceeded freezing in recent days and much of the snowpack has melted, many of the 50 snowfalls commemorated Monday are now too fragile to remain public for long.

Instead, as the entrance to Birkenau became known, a huge heated tent has been erected over the “Door of Death”.

The day will begin with survivor and Polish President Andrzej Duda placing a wreath on the “Death Wall” of the first Auschwitz concentration camp, where thousands of Polish prisoners were shot , Jews and Soviet prisoners of war.

Later, the scene would be moved to the death camp in Birkenau, known as Auschwitz II.

Each major anniversary commemorating the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops is different. International interest was far less 30 years ago, as the famous author Elie Wiesel led a large group of survivors and relatives to blow up a crematorium before escaping the Nazis.

German historian Susanne Willems speaks fondly of the survivors she has met over the decades: “Many of them were like favorite grandfathers to me. Of course we lost many, It’s my responsibility to continue and be their witness.”

There will be no political speeches from international leaders next to Death’s Gate, and due to the Russian presence that almost launched a full-scale war against Ukraine three years ago, the camp was liberated by the 60th Army of the Ukrainian First Front.

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The Nazis’ decision to exterminate Europe’s Jewish population in extermination camps came into effect in early 1942. 6 were built in occupied Poland: at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Treblinka was much smaller than Auschwitz, but 800,000-850,00 Jews were murdered in a short period of time.

The feared SS chief Heinrich Himmler and camp commander Rudolf Höss were responsible for the expansion at Auschwitz Complex, where Birkenau built a second camp for industrial murder.

By the end of 1942, there were four separate gas chambers and crematoria.

The first mass deportations of Jews came from Slovakia and France in March 1942, and then from the Netherlands and Belgium in July, to walk and die under this sign.

Soon the train will arrive at Birkenau on a specially built ramp, not far from two gas chambers where 12,000 Jews were gassed and their bodies burned daily.

Jona Laks had already lost her parents in Chelmo and arrived in 1944 from Lodz Ghetto in the north with her twin sister Miriam and sister Chana .

“I was ordered to go to the left, which means the crematorium, while my twin was sent to the right. That’s just because men are boring and he’d say ‘left, right, left, right’ without even looking at the people on the left. I don’t know , but I do know it’s not good,” she told the BBC.

80 to 90 percent of the newcomers were sent to their deaths, while others were selected for slave labor. “I was very close to the gate; I could see sparks, fire coming out of the chimney and even feel the smell of burning flesh.”

Jona Laks was rescued only because her sister shouted that she should not be separated from her twins, words that reached the notorious Nazi “Angel of Death” in the camp of Joseph Mongeli ( Josef Mengele.

Women and children, the elderly and the infirm were immediately sent to the gas chambers. My own grandfather survived a month and a day of slave labor on the first Dutch transport until August 18, 1942.

His sister Geertje Van Hasselt, her school principal husband Simon and their two daughters Hermi and nine-year-old Sophia in 1943 Arrived on February 12th.

From 1941 to 1945, nearly one million European Jews were murdered here. But the dead also included some 70,000 Polish prisoners, 21,000 Roman and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and an unknown homosexual.

Auschwitz attracted 1.83 million visitors last year, and while commemorations are commemorated with a stroll through the many old neighborhoods surrounding the museum, Auschwitz is dotted around Auschwitz on the weekends, before crossing over to Auschwitz on the weekends. Sin concentration camp and then the bleak and desolate sights of Birkenau.

The size of the site is daunting. The remains of many blocks are blocked off, and as you stare into the distance, all remains of the bricks are left. However, the remains of two gas chambers and the crematorium remained bombed as the Nazis attempted to destroy evidence.

One young woman said: “It makes you anxious. You just realize how sad it is.”

“Obviously you get it, but it’s crazy when you see it in real life,” said another. “It’s crazy to think that some people think it exists.”

Far-right parties have made huge gains in several European countries, especially in Germany, where the Alternative Fürdeutschland (AFD) ranks second in opinion polls ahead of next month’s general election.

Historian Susanne Willems, who has brought groups to Auschwitz for years, last week brought a group of police officers from Berlin to Auschwitz to explain the rise of Nazism and the How the military type of any hierarchy risks turning to authoritarianism.

“I’m doing this work to help these people clearly understand the limitations of police action and that whatever they are asked to do, it is still their own decision whether to obey; in fact, there is a responsibility to reject anything from their understanding Responsibility against human rights.”

Among those not attending the commemoration in Poland is 94-year-old Liliana Segre, a survivor of Italy’s most famous Auschwitz concentration camp, who will attend the event in Rome.

Segre, a lifelong senator who received police protection due to a torrent of anti-Semitic abuse, has reached new levels on social media since the documentary was released this month.

Her father and grandparents were murdered in Birkenau, but like Jona Laks, she traveled to Malchow, near the Ravensbrück concentration camp, after the Nazis died ), a teenage girl who survived the death of.

Roberto Jarach, director of Milan’s Holocaust Memorial Museum, said: “(Segel) often told me ‘I’m tired of the insults’.