Auschwitz survivors warned against increasing antisemitism across the globe while they gathered with world leaders at the site of the Polish death camp for the 80th anniversary of their liberation.
Monday’s event at Auschwitz, where Nazi German forces murdered an estimated 1.1 million Jews, was attended by 56 survivors — including 98-year-old Marian Turski, who called on those gathered to remember the slews of Holocaust victims who will always outnumber those who made it out alive.
“We have always been a tiny minority,” Turski said. “And now only a handful remain.”
Leon Weintraub, a 99-year-old survivor from Poland, condemned the rising hatred that he believes is a byproduct of “increasingly vocal movements of the radical and anti-democratic right” around the world, including in Sweden where he settled after the war.
“This ideology, an attitude that preaches hostility and hatred towards others, defines racism, antisemitism and homophobia as virtues,” Weintraub said.
World leaders representing Germany, Ukraine, Poland, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom all attended the somber anniversary.
No Russian leaders have been invited to the observance since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Ronald Lauder, head of the World Jewish Congress, called on the leaders to oppose antisemitism.
“When the Red Army entered these gates, the world finally saw where the step-by-step progression of antisemitism leads. It leads right here. The gas chambers. The piles of bodies. All the horrors within these gates,” Lauder said.
Lauder has been attending the anniversary observances for the last five decades and reflected on his time honoring those lost.
“This may well be the last commemoration, and also that I will speak at. But I leave today with the understanding that I did my best, I did my utmost to be worthy of the memory of all those who were lost there. I hope I was worthy,” he said to applause.
Tova Friedman, an 86-year-old Auschwitz survivor, was at the death camp from age 5 to 6 before she was liberated alongside 7,000 other prisoners. Now living in the US, she worries about what the country that used to be her safe haven will become.
“The world has become toxic,” she told The Associated Press a day before the observances. “I realize that we’re in a crisis again, that there is so much hatred around, so much distrust, that if we don’t stop, it may get worse and worse. There may be another terrible destruction.”
The youngest members of the Auschwitz survivors are approaching 90 years old and many participants from Monday believe the 80th anniversary would be the last one with a notable number of survivors in attendance.
Just five years ago there were roughly 200 survivors at Auschwitz for the anniversary.
With Post wires
