“Never Again”: Poland, Ukraine, the EU, and the World Mark 80th Anniversary of Auschwitz Liberation and Holocaust Remembrance

Presidents, prime ministers, royalty, and dignitaries from 54 countries gathered in Auschwitz on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp. Among those present were Polish President Duda, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, King Charles III of the United Kingdom, King Felipe VI of Spain, and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, among others. 

This year, the world's attention will be focused on several dozen survivors of the liberation from the concentration camp. Around 50 former inmates will attend the ceremony at the complex in southern Poland, where Nazi Germany murdered millions of people, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, and gay men.

‘This year, we are focusing on the survivors and their message,’ said Pawel Sawik, a spokesman for the Auschwitz Museum.

The commemoration has added significance not only because most of the survivors are in their 90s and will not be able to tell their stories for much longer, but also because today's ongoing wars and increasingly polarised politics make their testimonies as vital as ever.

On Monday, 27 January, Poland, Ukraine, the EU, and the world mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This day is marked annually on 27 January, introduced by the UN General Assembly on 1 November 2005.

On 27 January 1945, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front liberated one of the largest Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. 

During the Second World War, 6 million Jews became victims of the Nazi policy of extermination of peoples and groups that the Nazis considered ‘threats’ or ‘inferior’. 

The Germans began preparations for the liquidation of Auschwitz in August 1944. They consistently evacuated prisoners to the interior of the Reich. At the end of 1944, the Germans burned documents and erased traces of the crimes: the pits were covered with human ashes, crematorium IV was dismantled to the foundation, and the three remaining crematoria were prepared for detonation. They were destroyed just before leaving the camp.

This morning, several dozen survivors - former inmates of German camps - and Polish President Andrzej Duda laid wreaths and lit candles in front of the Death Wall at the former Auschwitz I. It was the first Monday event of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp.

‘Today, we are witnessing an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism on our continent, which has not been seen since the Second World War. We strongly condemn the alarming rise in violent anti-Semitic incidents, Holocaust denial and distortion, as well as conspiracy theories and prejudice against Jews,’ reads the statement of the European Council on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

‘We must never forget the Holocaust. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember the six million Jewish women, men and children, hundreds of thousands of Roma and all other victims of the Holocaust. It is our duty to tell future generations about European history, including its darkest pages,’ the European Commission said in a statement.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy paid tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. He warned that the memory of the Holocaust is becoming weaker. And the evil that tries to destroy the lives of entire nations still remains in the world. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, key sites of Holocaust remembrance in Ukraine have been targeted by Russian invaders. Thus, on 1 March 2022, eight decades after the mass shootings of about 100,000 civilians and prisoners of war, including Jews and Roma, Red Army soldiers, and communists, by the Nazis in the Babyn Yar tract in Kyiv, underground members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, prisoners of the Syrets concentration camp and even patients of the Pavlov psychiatric hospital, the Russian modern army launched a missile attack on Babyn Yar, which is a symbol of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.