Jarek Praszkiewicz / EPA
50 survivors return to Auschwitz
50 Holocaust survivors are present this Monday in Auschwitz. The doors were opened to 7,000 prisoners 8 decades ago, celebrated at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise.
The British King Charles III, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the French President Emmanuel Macron and even the Israeli Minister of Education, Yoav Kisch, are expected to be present this Monday in Auschwitz-Birkenau, a place that was once the largest Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War.
It was, in fact, soldiers from the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front who opened the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945.
According to the account of the concentration camp, now converted into a museum, more than 230 Soviet soldiers died in combat while liberating Main Camp, Birkenau, Monowitz and the town of Oświęcim.
Even though the liberation of these camps is due to the former USSR, this year Russia will not be present at the event. The director of the museum, Piotr Cywińskisays what Putin’s presence would be like “inconceivable“, since, after the invasion of Ukraine, “a country that does not understand the value of freedom has something to do with a ceremony dedicated to liberation” Auschwitz.
Nearly 1.1 million people were murdered in the concentration camp from 1940 to 1945, many of them Jews, but also other victims of the Third Reich, including Poles, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war, recalls .
At the event celebrating the liberation of the concentration camp, there will be no political speeches, but the 50 survivors of Auschwitz still alive, who were imprisoned when they were children, were invited to speak.
Today is also International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and “nothing will be easy on the way back“, tells CNN survivor Michael Bornstein, who spent 7 months in the concentration camp as a child.
Since 2023, international organizations have registered a increase of more than 400% in antisemitism on a global scale, according to a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).
76% of Jews surveyed also claim to hide their Jewish identity at least occasionally. “Europe is witnessing a wave of anti-Semitismpartly motivated by the conflict in the Middle East. This situation seriously limits the ability of Jews to live in safety and dignity,” said Sirpa Rautio, director of the FRA.
A recent survey carried out in eight countries (USA, United Kingdom, France, Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania) revealed that the majority of respondents, with the exception of Romania, believe that something like the Holocaust could happen again.
