
Holocaust survivors, President Andrzej Duda and First Lady Agata Kornhauser–Duda and world leaders gathered in Poland on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German Auschwitz–Birkenau death camp, where more than 1.1 million people perished during World War II.
The main remembrance ceremony is held at Auschwitz Memorial and Museum in southern Poland, in front of the historic main gate to the former camp, with around 3,000 people in attendance, including delegations from over 60 states and representatives of international organizations.
President Andrzej Duda
We Poles, on whose soil, then occupied by Hitler’s Germany, the Germans built the extermination industry and this extermination camp, are today the guardians of memory. In a painful way, we are continuing this extraordinary mission of the Cavalry Captain Pilecki, who deliberately let himself be imprisoned, locked up in this camp, in order to testify, to create a resistance movement, but also to leave this place, to flee from this place, to be a living proof of what happened here. And to be able to take this message to the Western Allies, to testify to what Hitler’s Germans were doing in the occupied territories and what they were doing to the subjugated nations, said the President Andrzej Duda during the morning ceremony.
POLISH PRESIDENT’S ADRESS >>
POLISH VERSION >>
עִבְרִית >>
AUF DEUTSCH >>
The main afternoon remembrance ceremony took place at Auschwitz Memorial and Museum in southern Poland, in front of the historic main gate to the former camp, with around 3,000 people in attendance, including delegations from over 60 states and representatives of international organisations.
King Charles III, German President Frank–Walter Steinmeier, French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took part in the ceremony among others.
The Nazi Germany established the Auschwitz camp in 1940, initially for the imprisonment of Poles. Auschwitz II–Birkenau was opened two years later and became the main site for the mass extermination of Jews. There was also a network of sub–camps in the complex.
The Nazis killed at least 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, mainly Jews, but also Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.
The camp was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. In 1947, it was declared a national memorial site.
January 27 has been designated by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. (PAP)
Surce: