Auschwitz was liberated 80 years ago. The spotlight is on survivors as their numbers dwindle
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The world's focus will be on the remaining survivors of Nazi Germany's atrocities on Monday as world leaders and royalty join them for commemorations on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The main observances take place at the site in southern Poland where Nazi Germany murdered over a million people, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, gay people and others targeted for elimination in Adolf Hitler's racial ideology.
The anniversary has taken on added poignancy due to the advanced age of the survivors, and an awareness that they will soon be gone, even as new wars makes their warnings as relevant as ever.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum says it expects about 50 survivors of Auschwitz and other camps to attend the events on Monday afternoon, joined by political leaders and royalty.
On this occasion, the powerful will sit and listen to the voices of the former prisoners, while there is still time to hear them.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/auschwitz-was-liberated-80-years-ago-the-spotlight-is-on-survivors-as-their-numbers-dwindle/ar-AA1xPEn5?ocid=msedgntp&pc=NMTS&cvid=8e524be6c62f43118a045d4ef047c62e&ei=36
Never forget this atrocity, never let it happen again.
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@auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social
25 January 1935 | Dutch Jewish boy, John Groenteman, was born in Amsterdam.
He was deported to #Auschwitz from #Westerbork in September 1942. He was murdered in a gas chamber after arrival selection.
January 25, 2025 at 10:00 AM
https://bsky.app/profile/auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social/post/3lgl6gtlqpr23
"I hope I'm wrong," says survivor Ivor Perl. "But there's […] a saying that if one doesn't learn from history, you're cursed to live through it again."
Ivor is nearly 93 years old and it took half a century for him to feel able to talk publicly about his time at the Nazi concentration camp.
"When I was younger I thought to myself, 'I arrived in this world in a terrible time, 1932, at least when I leave it the world will be in a better place'," he says. "But I'm doubting it very, very much.
~snip~
