Auschwitz survivors, European leaders observe 80th liberation anniversary

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.

Nazi German forces murdered some 1.1 million people at the site in southern Poland, which was under German occupation during World War II.

Most of the victims were Jews killed in industrial-scale gas chambers, but also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and many others.

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, including many Polish who resisted the occupation of their country.

They were joined by Polish President Andrzej Duda, whose nation lost 6 million citizens during the war. He carried a candle and walked with Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum director Piotr Cywinski.

“We Poles, on whose land was occupied by Nazi Germans at that time, the Germans built this extermination industry and this concentration camp, are today the guardians of memory,” Duda said to reporters afterwards.

He spoke of the “unimaginable harm” inflicted on so many people, especially the Jewish people.

“May the memory of all the dead live on, may they rest in peace,” he said.

Russia not invited

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy placed a candle at the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial in Kiev, where tens of thousands of Jews were executed during the Nazi occupation.

Commemorations will culminate later Monday when world leaders and royalty will 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 choosing to make them the centre of the observances.

Among the leaders expected to attend are Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Germany has never sent both of its highest state representatives to the observances bef ore, according to German news agency dpa.

It is a sign of Germany's continued commitment to take responsibility for the nation's crimes, even amid a growing far-right movement that would like to forget.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will also attend, while Britain's King Charles III will also be there, along with kings and queens from Spain, Denmark and Norway.

Russian representatives were in the past central guests at the anniversary observances in recognition of the Soviet liberation of the camp on January 27, 1945, and the huge losses suffered by Soviet forces in the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany.

But they have not been welcome since the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022.