On the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, world leaders from more than 60 countries, including Slovak President Petr Pellegrini, Holocaust survivors and representatives of several international organizations gathered in Poland on Monday. TASR writes about it according to the reports of the PAP and AFP agencies.
The main memorial ceremony was held in front of the entrance gate to the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp near Auschwitz in southern Poland. Approximately 3,000 people attended the ceremony, whom he welcomed living former prisoner Marian Turski. In his speech, he recalled that most of the prisoners did not live to the point where they could talk about their experiences. “Therefore, I think our thoughts should go to the vast majority, to the millions of victims who will never tell us what they lived through, what they felt, because their lives were claimed by the Holocaust.” Turski said.
Total on Monday Auschwitz-Birkenau was visited by 50 camp survivors. Four of them gave speeches during the event, in which condemned the current global rise in anti-Semitism. Turkish guard, already hatred and prejudice against other nationalities and ethnic groups has always led to bloodshed. But at the same time he stated Germany, France, Poland and Lithuania as examples of countries with conflict-free coexistence of different groups of people and praised their ability to accept compromises for “a peaceful, secure life for… future generations”.
Among the participating world leaders were Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, British King Charles III. or French President Emmanuel Macron. However, the organizers of the memorial ceremony decided not to include the speeches of political representatives in the program.
The concentration camp in Auschwitz was originally built by the Germans in 1940 with the intention of imprisoning Poles. Later he became the main place of mass killing of Jews and during World War II in it more than 1.1 million people died – Jews, Poles, Roma, but also Soviet prisoners of war. The camp was liberated by Red Army soldiers on January 27, 1945. This day was declared by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
