Auschwitz survivors return as world remembers Nazi death camp 80 years on

About 50 survivors of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau will return to the site on Monday to commemorate the day they were liberated on January 27, 1945.

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

But it will be the survivors – many of whom are in their late 80s and 90s – and not the dignitaries, whose voices will be heard during the commemoration at the camp, where 1.1 million people were killed, most of them Jews.

Their message is to tell the world what happened here and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Jona Laks, who is now 94 years old and arrived with his twins and twin sisters in 1944 said: “Every life on earth has the right to live. “Auschwitz was a killing laboratory. few survived Auschwitz.”

Although daytime temperatures in recent days have risen above freezing and the snow has melted, many of the 50 arriving at Monday’s memorial are now too weak to stay outside for long.

Instead, a large, heated tent has been set up above the “Gate of Death”, as the entrance to Birkenau is known.

The day will begin with survivors and Polish President Andrzej Duda laying a wreath on the “Death Wall” at the first Auschwitz concentration camp, where thousands of Polish, Jewish and Soviet prisoners were shot.

Later, the scene will move to the death camp in Birkenau, known as Auschwitz II.

Every major anniversary commemorating the liberation of the camp by Soviet forces is different. 30 years ago, there was no international attention, when the famous writer Elie Wiesel led a large group of surviving friends and relatives to one of the crematoriums that the Nazis blew up before escaping.

German historian Susanne Willems speaks fondly of the survivors she has met over the decades: “Many were like dear grandparents to me.” We have certainly lost many of them and it is my duty to continue and be their witnesses.

There will be no political speeches from world leaders near the Gate of Death, and there will be no presence of Russia because of the great war that started in Ukraine almost three years ago, although the camp was liberated by the 60th army commanded by Russia. In front.

Vladimir Putin attended the 60th anniversary; they are not accepted now.

The Nazis’ decision to kill all European Jews in concentration camps went into effect in early 1942. Six were built in occupied Poland: in Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Treblinka was much smaller than Auschwitz, yet 800,000-850,00 Jews were killed there in a very short time.

Heinrich Himmler, head of the dreaded SS, and camp commander Rudolf Höss oversaw the expansion of Auschwitz to build a second extermination camp at Birkenau.

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

The first deportations of Jews to Birkenau came from Slovakia and France in March 1942, then in July from the Netherlands and Belgium, traveling under a well-known sign. work sets you free (Jobs free you) from Auschwitz to their death in a new camp.

Trains were soon arriving at Birkenau on a specially constructed elevated platform, a short distance from two gas chambers, and at one point 12,000 Jews were being gassed and their bodies burned daily.

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

“I was ordered to go to the left, meaning the crematorium, while my twins were sent to the right. It was because the man was so tired, he kept saying ‘Left, right, left, right’ without even looking at the people. I didn’t know that leaving meant death, but I knew it wasn’t good,” he told the BBC.

Eighty to 90 percent of the new arrivals were sent to be killed while others were selected for slave labor. “I was very close to the gate, I could see the lightning, the fire coming out of the chimney and I could smell the burning meat.”

Jonah Laks was saved only because his older sister shouted that he should not be separated from his twins and word reached the famous Nazi “Angel of Death” at the camp, Josef Mengele, who used the Birkenau section for medical experiments in many cases to kill the twins. .

Women and children, the elderly and the sick were immediately sent to the air chambers. My grandfather, during the first Dutch expedition, survived the slave labor for a month and a day, until 18 August 1942.

Her sister, Geertje van Hasselt, her school principal husband Simon, and their two daughters Hermi, 14, and nine-year-old Sophia were killed by 12 February 1943.

About a million European Jews were killed here from 1941 to 1945. But the dead also include 70,000 Polish prisoners, 21,000 Roma and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and an unknown number of single men.

Auschwitz attracted 1.83 million visitors last year and even though it was closed for the memorial many people walked around the museum which spread over many old places across Auschwitz 1 at the weekend, then the ruins of Birkenau.

The size of the site is difficult. The remains of many blocks have been closed, with all the brick foundations left as you look into the distance. But the ruins of two gas chambers and a crematorium remain, blown up when the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence.

“It makes you anxious to be here. “You don’t realize how sad it is until you see it,” said a young woman with a group of friends from Lancashire, all 18 years old.

“Obviously you learn about it, but it’s crazy when you see it in real life,” said another. “It’s crazy to think that other people don’t think it doesn’t exist.”

Far-right parties have made significant gains in several European countries, particularly in Germany, where the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is in second place in elections ahead of next month.

Historian Susanne Willems, who for many years has brought groups to Auschwitz, last week took a group of police officers from Berlin to Auschwitz to describe the rise of the Nazis and how groups of all kinds are at risk of joining the regime.

“I am doing this work to help these people understand better what the police should stop, and that whatever they are asked to do, it is their choice to obey or not; they have the right, especially the duty, to refuse anything that, according to their understanding, is against the rights of the people.

One of those not in Poland at the event is Italy’s most famous Auschwitz survivor, 94-year-old Liliana Segre, who will instead take part in events in Rome.

Senator for life, Segre receives police protection for antisemitic violence, which has reached a new level on social media since documents were released this month on his life.

Her father and grandfather were both killed in Birkenau, but like Jonah Laks she survived the Nazi death march to Malchow near Ravensbrück concentration camp as a young woman.

“[Segre] they often tell me ‘I’m tired of the insults’,” says Roberto Jarach, director of the Holocaust memorial in Milan.