Auschwitz Survivors Deliver Stark Warning as Memories Fade 

Survivors of Auschwitz share powerful messages to preserve the lessons of history, urging younger generations to remember the atrocities as memories of the Holocaust begin to fade.

“We were deprived of our humanity,” said Leon Weintraub, 99. He is the oldest among the four individuals who spoke next to the infamous Death Gate at Birkenau extermination camp.

Commemorating 80 years since its liberation, world leaders and European royalty came together on Monday to honor 56 survivors of Hitler’s genocide against European Jews.

“We were victims in a void of morality,” said Tova Friedman, recounting her experience as a five-and-a-half-year-old girl who witnessed the horrors of Nazi persecution while holding tightly to her mother’s hand.

She recounted observing from her hiding spot in a labor camp “as all my young friends were gathered and taken to their deaths, while the heart-wrenching cries of their parents went unheard.”

The lessons from history were evident: survivors, above all, grasped the dangers of intolerance. Antisemitism served as an early warning sign.

Beneath a massive white tent that spanned the entrance to the death camp, Leon Weintraub urged young people especially to be “attuned to any signs of intolerance and animosity towards those who are different.”

Niusia Horowitz-Karakulska, a survivor who was sent to Birkenau in 1944, was one of the 56 camp survivors present at the ceremony.

Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis were responsible for the murder of 1.1 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Nearly a million were Jews, 70,000 were Polish prisoners, 21,000 Roma individuals, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and an unspecified number of gay men.

This was one of the six death camps constructed by the Nazis in occupied Poland in 1942, and it was undoubtedly the largest.

Another survivor who spoke was Janina Iwanska, a 94-year-old Catholic who had been arrested as a child during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. She recalled how Josef Mengele, infamously known as the Nazi “Angel of Death,” ordered all remaining Roma at the camp to be sent to their deaths at Birkenau after they were no longer required for his deadly medical experiments.

Marian Turski, aged 98, noted that very few people survived the death camp and now only a small number remain. He reflected on the millions of victims “who will never share their experiences or emotions with us because they were lost to that mass destruction.”

Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz museum, urged efforts to preserve the memory of past events as survivors pass away.

“Memory wounds and heals, it directs us—without memory, there’s no history, experience, or reference,” he stated. Survivors listened intently, many adorned in blue-and-white striped scarves representing prisoners’ attire.

Memory served as the central theme of this day, recognized globally as International Holocaust Memorial Day.

Polish President Andrzej Duda assured that Poland can be relied upon to uphold the memory of the six death camps located within its borders, namely Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek, and Chelmno.

Polish President Andrzej Duda and Auschwitz museum director Piotr Cywinski both paid tribute.

“We are the keepers of remembrance,” stated Duda after placing a wreath at the wall where thousands of prisoners were executed in Auschwitz I, located 3 km (1.85 miles) from Birkenau concentration camp.

At the United Nations in New York, far removed from the entrance to a Nazi death camp, Secretary General António Guterres emphasized that “remembrance is not only a moral act; it’s a call to action.” He cautioned against the spreading of Holocaust denial and highlighted how hatred was being incited worldwide.

He referenced Italian survivor Primo Levi, who documented his experiences in the camps for future generations but ultimately could not bear the emotional scars of what he had seen. As fellow survivor Elie Wiesel poignantly stated, Levi “died at Auschwitz 40 years later.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, joined fellow world leaders in lighting a candle to honor the memory of the victims.

King Charles, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain, along with Denmark’s King Frederik and Queen Mary were among those who traveled to southern Poland on Monday for the commemoration marking the day when Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army.

Charles III made history as the first reigning British monarch to visit Auschwitz, where he was visibly moved and wiped away tears while listening to stories from four survivors.

King Charles was guided through a tour of Auschwitz, which included exhibits displaying personal belongings of those who were sent to the former concentration camp.

While touring the camp, he placed a wreath in remembrance of the victims.

Sources close to the King mentioned that the visit held great significance for him, with one aide referring to it as a “deeply personal pilgrimage.”

Earlier that day, he emphasized the importance of remembering the “evils of the past” as a crucial responsibility.

During his visit to the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow, which he inaugurated 17 years prior, the King remarked that the Krakow Jewish community had experienced a “rebirth” from the devastation of the Holocaust. He emphasized that creating a kinder and more compassionate world for future generations is our collective “sacred task.”

Mala Tribich, a 94-year-old Polish-born British survivor who was liberated from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, attended Monday’s event at Auschwitz.

She told the BBC, “We have witnessed the outcomes of camps, beatings, and hatred. The lessons imparted to children under a tyrant can be extremely harmful—not just to them but also to everything around them. It’s vital that we protect against this.”

Lord Pickles, the UK’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues and chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, cautioned that “distortion” posed a threat to both the legacy and historical truth of the Holocaust.

After listening to the survivors inside the tent at Birkenau, he remarked to the BBC that “we witnessed a transition from memory into history,” as there are fewer opportunities for survivors to give speeches in the future.

He added, “That’s incredibly daunting and I don’t think we’re living in a post-Holocaust world.”

A recent survey conducted in eight countries and published last week revealed a common belief that another Holocaust is possible. The study, which surveyed 1,000 individuals from each country on behalf of the Claims Conference, found especially high levels of concern in both the US and UK.

BBC