OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) – Survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau and other mourners commemorated Friday the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi Germany’s death camp, with some expressing horror that war has once again shattered peace in Europe and the lesson of “Never again” is forgotten.
The former concentration and extermination camp is located in the city of Oświęcim in southern Poland, which was occupied by German troops during World War II and became the target of systematic murder of Jews, Poles, Soviet POWs, Roma and others for disposal by Adolf Hitler and his henchmen .
In all, about 1.1 million people were killed in the huge complex before it was liberated by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.
Today the place with its barracks, barbed wire and ruins of gas chambers is one of the world’s most famous symbols of evil and a place of pilgrimage for millions.
Jewish and Christian prayers for the dead were offered at the memorial, just 300 kilometers from Ukraine, where Russian aggression is wreaking death and destruction – a conflict that has occupied many this year.
“As I stand here today at this Birkenau memorial, I follow with horror the news from the East that the Russian army, which liberated us here, is waging a war there in Ukraine. Why? Why?” lamented survivor Zdzisława Włodarczyk during Friday’s celebrations.
Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz State Museum, compared Nazi crimes to those committed by the Russians in Ukrainian cities like Bucha and Mariupol. He said they were inspired by a “similarly sick megalomania” and that free people should not remain indifferent.
“Silence means giving perpetrators a voice,” Cywinski said. “Remaining indifferent is tantamount to condoning murder.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin attended celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the camp’s liberation in 2005. No Russian official was invited this year because of the attack on Ukraine.
Valentina Matvienko, Speaker of the Russian House of Lords, regretted this as a “cynical” move.
“They refused to invite the liberators so that they could pay tribute to the memory of the victims,” she said. “Obviously this is very worrying.”
Rabbi Berl Lazar, one of Russia’s two chief rabbis, said not having invited Russian guests was “certainly a humiliation because we clearly know and remember the Red Army’s role in the liberation of Auschwitz.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy commemorated the victims of the Holocaust in Babi Yar, a ravine in Kyiv where nearly 34,000 Jews were killed in 48 hours in 1941.
“We know and remember that indifference kills along with hate,” he said in a social media post.
“Indifference and hate can only ever create evil together. That is why it is so important that everyone who values life shows determination in saving those whom hate seeks to destroy.”
One Israeli teacher, Yossi Michal, who is paying tribute to the victims with a teachers’ union delegation, said it was important to remember the past and although he said what was happening in Ukraine was horrific, he felt that everyone case is unique and they are not should be compared.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has its roots in the neo-fascist Italian social movement after World War II, called the Holocaust “the abyss of humanity”. An evil that also touched our country with the shame of the 1938 racial laws.”
Bogdan Bartnikowski, a Pole who was 12 when he was transported to Auschwitz, said the first images he saw on TV last February of refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered traumatic memories .
He was stunned to see, in a large crowd of refugees, a little girl holding her mother in one hand and a teddy bear in the other.
“It was literally a slap on the head for me because after almost 80 years I suddenly saw what I had seen in a freight car when I was being transported to Auschwitz. A little girl was sitting next to me, holding a doll to her chest,” said Bartnikowski, now 91.
Bartnikowski was among several Auschwitz survivors who spoke to journalists on Thursday about their experiences.
Another, Stefania Wernik, who was born in Auschwitz in November 1944, less than three months before liberation, spoke of Auschwitz as “hell on earth”.
She said she was so tiny when she was born that the Nazis tattooed her number – 89136 – on her thigh. She was washed in cold water, wrapped in rags and subjected to medical experiments.
Yet her mother had plenty of milk, and both survived. After the war, her mother returned home and met her husband again, and “the whole village came to look at us and said it was a miracle.”
She appealed for “no more fascism that brings death, genocide, crime, slaughter and the loss of human dignity”.
Among those attending Friday’s memorial services was Doug Emhoff, husband of US Vice President Kamala Harris. Emhoff, the first Jew to be married to one of the top two US nationally elected officials, bowed his head in front of an execution wall at Auschwitz, where he left a wreath of flowers in the colors of the US flag and the words: “From the people of the United States of America.”
The Germans set up Auschwitz for Polish prisoners in 1940; They later expanded the complex and built death chambers and crematoria to which Jews from all over Europe were brought by train to be murdered.
Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “The suffering of 6 million innocently murdered Jews will not be forgotten – just like the suffering of the survivors.”
“On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember our historical responsibility to ensure that our never again lives on in the future,” he wrote on Twitter.
This year, the German Bundestag held a commemoration event for those persecuted because of their sexual orientation. Thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people were imprisoned and killed by the Nazis – a fate that was not publicly acknowledged until decades after World War II.
Elsewhere in the world, events marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual commemoration instituted by a United Nations resolution in 2005.
In Britain, candles were lit in homes and public buildings, including Buckingham Palace, to commemorate victims of the genocide.
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Associated Press writers Frank Jordans in Berlin and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.