The 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops is being marked on Monday at the site of the former death camp, a ceremony that is widely being treated as the last major observance that any notable number of survivors will be able to attend. Among those who was traveled to the site is 86-year-old Tova Friedman, who was 6 when she was among the 7,000 people liberated on Jan. 27, 1945. She believes it will be the last gathering of survivors at Auschwitz, and she came from her home in New Jersey to add her voice to those warning about rising hatred and antisemitism.
"The world has become toxic," she told the AP a day before the observances in nearby Krakow. "I realize that we're in a crisis again, that there is so much hatred around, so much distrust, that if we don't stop ... there may be another terrible destruction." Elderly camp survivors, some wearing blue-and-white striped scarves that recall their prison uniforms, walked together to the Death Wall, where prisoners were executed. They were joined by Polish President Andrzej Duda. "We Poles, on whose land ... the Germans built this extermination industry and this concentration camp, are today the guardians of memory," Duda said.
In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Commemorations will culminate later Monday when world leaders and royalty join with elderly camp survivors, the youngest of whom are in their 80s, at Birkenau, the part of Auschwitz where the mass murder of Jews took place. Politicians, however, have not been asked to speak this year. Due to the advanced age of the survivors, about 50 of whom are expected, organizers are making them the center of the observances.
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