It is they who deserve to be heard on such a day, those few who survived the former Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination and concentration camp, of whom 56 traveled back to the site of horror to attend the memorial ceremony. Only just over 7, people survived, emaciated by imprisonment and torture. The date now serves as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Between and , the Nazis murdered over a million people in Auschwitz and the camp's horrific subcamps, the majority of them Jews. But Sinti and Roma, political prisoners, homosexuals, the disabled, and imprisoned people from Poland and other nations were also victims of the murderous regime. Auschwitz has become synonymous with the Holocaust, its "capital," as historian Peter Hayes put it. It was an industrial murder factory , the full dimensions of which weren't fully grasped until decades later — if such a thing can ever truly be grasped.
On Monday, 80 years to the day after the liberation of the camp, survivors, heads of state and government, and guests of honor gathered at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp for a major memorial ceremony celebrating the anniversary.
Unlike previous anniversaries, there were no speeches by politicians — despite the delegations from 60 nations that traveled to the event. It was political all the same. Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, , was a recurring theme, with the president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald S.
Lauder, saying that Jewish students in many countries have been marginalized and that Israel has been singled out for scorn. Even many of my friends don't know that it's not actually my birthday," said Friedman at the beginning of her speech. Turski welcomed the survivors in the audience and commemorated all those who could not be there: "I believe our thoughts go towards the huge majority, those millions of victims who will never tell us what they experienced, what they felt, just because they were consumed by that mass destruction, the Shoah Holocaust.
