“We know where we come from: memories of the outside world populate our dreams and our wakefulness, we realize with amazement that we have forgotten nothing, every recollection evoked emerges before us painfully sharp. But where we are going we do not know.” These sentences, written by Holocaust survivor Primo Levi in his book If This Is a Man, can be taken as a warning not to repeat the mistakes of the past. And that is what the survivors of Auschwitz were also clinging to on Monday at the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp.
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In front of more than 2,500 people in the Polish town, and in the presence of European leaders, among them King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain, several survivors spoke of the present, the past and the future.
One survivor, Marian Turski, noted that “hatred and incitement to hatred” only lead “to a bloodbath” if such speeches are not stopped. “Let us not be afraid to convince ourselves that we can solve problems between neighbors, because for centuries, on many continents, many nations and many peoples and many ethnic groups have had their homes with each other,” she said before the gaze also of King Charles III of England, among other leaders such as German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. In turn, the crowns of Sweden, Norway and Luxembourg have sent heirs.
Turski also appealed to the understanding that France and Germany had in the past “to achieve a better future for our children and grandchildren”. At the age of 99, he also recalled his survival of two “death marches”, that is, two “trips” to the gas chambers at a time when the Allies were getting closer to defeating Nazi Germany. At this point, the man warned of the “rise of anti-Semitism” that is currently taking place and warned that it was this same dynamic that led to the Holocaust.
On the other hand, Janina Iwańska, born in 1930, called on Europe “not to get carried away by madness” because, she argued, the past shows that “chaos can happen anywhere.” Before a total silence from the audience, the woman joined other survivors to recall that one cannot “repeat the mistakes of the 1930s” when “the plans of the Nazi regime were not taken seriously.” Right now the number of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust is 220,000 people, according to a study by the Claims Conference. For her part, Tova Friedman, 86, appealed to “the collective conscience to transform the violence, anger, hatred and malignity that has so powerfully gripped society into a more humane and just world before these negative forces destroy the world.”
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The survivors in Auschwitz were liberated on January 27th, 1945 by the Red Army.
960 000 Jews, 74 000 non-Jewish Poles, 21 000 Soviet POWs, 15 000 Roma and 15 000 other people were murdered there by Nazi Germany.
Never again! pic.twitter.com/rKcAu7XH11
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 27, 2024
The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, assumed the “great responsibility” of Germany in the Holocaust, and called to “keep alive the memory” of what happened. “I am against turning the page, saying that it was too long ago,” he said, and recalled that this responsibility ‘will never end’ and that it is a question ‘not only of history’ but also of the personal responsibility of each citizen.
For his part, Polish President Andrej Duda assured that the country is now “a haven for Jews” and defended the decision not to apply the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, however, was not in Poland; Israel was represented by Education Minister Yoav Kisch.
“The importance of these anniversaries lies in the possibility of meeting for the last time with the survivors, who have the opportunity to give their testimony, which is essential for the security of the world and for the protection of human dignity and its values,” concluded Duda. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, also intervened in this tone. “These acts allow us to acknowledge the past, but also to examine the present and look to the future.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin also had a message of remembrance of the Holocaust. “Today is a date of great moral and human significance. In January 1945, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz and showed humanity the truth about the crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices, who exterminated millions of Jews, Russians and Gypsies, among others,” he said, before adding that ”it was the Soviet soldiers who put an end to this terrible evil in order to achieve victory.” At this point, he assured that Russia will continue to “firmly oppose attempts to rewrite history” and claimed the role of the Russians against “neo-Nazi revanchism” in an implicit message framed in his vision of the war in Ukraine. Precisely at the events in Poland, the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, was present, unlike Putin himself.
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“The Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the scene of one of the darkest chapters in the history of mankind. 80 years after its liberation, as we gather at the site of horror to honor those who perished and those who survived, we recommit ourselves to our struggle against hatred,” said European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, who shared a photo at the entrance to the camp, now a museum.
-Thailand News (TN)
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