Auschwitz survivor warns of ‘huge rise in antisemitism’ in speech marking 80 years since death camp’s liberation – live | Holocaust

Closing the event, Auschwitz museum director, Piotr Cywiński, issued a rallying cry to protect the memory of the Holocaust and Auschwitz.

He said:

Every generation needs a lens to evaluate its time. …

Memory hurts. Memory helps. Memory guides. Memory warns. Memory raises awareness. Memory obliges.

Who are you without memory? Without memory, you have no history. You have no experience, and no point of reference.

If you have no memory, you may not know which path to choose. And if you truly lack memory, be sure: your enemies will design one for you. …

Do something good – whatever you can, in the best way you can. Do it for others, and … do it without the scope of your abilities.

But do something. Act.

His speech ends the formal part of the ceremony, followed by prayers and tributes as survivors and leaders light commemorative candles.

Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, spoke on behalf of the Auschwitz museum’s major donors.

In a strongly worded speech, he warned against the dramatic rise of antisemitism,

Here are excerpts from his speech:

Ten years ago, in 2015, Auschwitz survivor, Roman Kent, stood here on this platform at the 70th anniversary of the liberation. He said these words: We don’t want our past to be our children’s future.

Roman Kent died six years later, but his words haunt us today because if Roman Kent was here and saw what was happening to the Jewish people around the world in 2025, he would cry.

Referring directly to the 7 October attacks by Hamas, he said:

In a very fundamental way, what happened in Israel on October seventh, and what happened here at Auschwitz, have one common thread: the age-old hatred of Jews. …

Today, we see eerie parallels throughout the world, throughout Europe, North America, even Australia.

Today, Jewish professors have been fired. Today, Jewish children have been told to hide any outward signs of being Jewish. Today, there are mass demonstrations against Jews. Today, we see vile comments all over social media. Then I remind you, this is not 1933 or 1939. This is 2025. The hatred of Jews had its willing supporters then, and it has them now.

He explicitly warned against the “indifference” towards rising antisemitism, saying that “the lessons of Auschwitz are not just for Jews, they are for the entire world.”

That’s because Jews are the canaries in the coalmine. When the canary dies, miners know they have to get out of that mine as fast as possible. That canary died 15 months ago on 7 October, and that is the most consequential warning for the entire world. …

Today, I cannot stand here and look at these survivors and say that everything is OK as I have in the past. Because everything is not OK. Roman Kent’s words haunt us.

Speaking next, Auschwitz survivor Leon Weintraub urged “young people to be sensitive to all expressions of intolerance and resentment towards those who are different,” while explicitly warning about the rise of “the enemies of democracy”.

Let us be very serious and let’s take seriously what the enemies of democracy preach. They really seek to implement the slogans they promote if they succeed in gaining power.

We must avoid the mistake of the 1930s when the world failed to take seriously the Nazi regime and their plans to create a state free of Jews, Roma, and people of different opinions, or sick, or those deemed unfit to live, were underestimated.

Weintraub also called out the existence of far-right nationalist movements in Poland and “in many European countries.”

It grieves me deeply to see in many European countries, but also in our country [Poland], Nazi-style uniforms and slogans openly paraded at marches, proudly proclaiming themselves nationalists and identifying themselves with the Nazi ideas, with the ideology … that murdered millions who were considered subhuman; this ideology which proclaims hostility and hatred towards others, sees racism, antisemitism, and homophobia as virtues.

This is occurring here in our country which has suffered so much with extensive damage under the Nazi occupation.

He ends his speech on a call that today’s commemoration “serves as a reminder of the inhumane treatment of individual, but also … a warning against the increasingly vocal movements of the radical and anti-democratic right.”

Speaking on behalf of the children of the Holocaust, author and Auschwitz survivor Tova Friedman, said:

I’m here to talk about those who aren’t here … I would like to share some of my memories because I know that there are many survivors here who are struggling with their own.

I remember as a five-and-a-half-year-old child, watching from my hiding place … as all my little friends were rounded up and driven to their deaths, while the heart-breaking cries of their parents fell on deaf ears. After all the children were gone and the courtyard was empty, I thought to myself, Am I the only Jewish child left in the world? … Is my barrack next? I silently wondered. I thought that we all have to die, that it was normal. If you’re a Jewish child, you have to die.

Today, however, we all have an obligation not only to remember, … but also to warn and to teach that hatred only begets more hatred, killing more killing. Instead, our revenge has been to build a strong Jewish country and raise our families in peace. …

Eighty years after liberation, the world is again in crisis. Our Jewish Christian values have been overshadowed worldwide by prejudice, fear, suspicion and extremism. The rampant antisemitism that is spreading among the nations is shocking. … Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is fighting for its very existence and its way of life.

We mourn not only the fallen soldiers and the hostages, but also the turbulence and mistrust in our society. We pray for strength, resilience, and of course, hope, which has to be part of our daily life.

We all, all of us, must reawaken our collective conscience to transform … this violence, anger, hatred, and malignancy that has so powerful gripped our society into a humane and just world before these terrible, terrible negative forces will destroy us all.

Speaking next, another Auschwitz survivor, Janina Iwańska, delivered a detailed account of life within the camp, and ended with a stark warning:

The war finished in 1945. People all over the world were in euphoria. “Never again” was the slogan. People believed the war would never happen again and we would be forever happy. Picasso painted this dove of peace, symbolising that everything would be well, for ever.

Yet some people made specific predictions, saying that it is impossible for these things never to happen again because people became so inhuman that it may happen again.

In 1950, a Polish writer and essayist wrote something about the war in “Kultura” [a Polish-émigré literary-political magazine published first in Rome and then in Paris].

He wrote:

“If Europe ravaged by this madness is to avoid destruction, its people must learn to anticipate better the consequences of their actions. They must not disregard those who possess such foresight. For the older generation, this may be of lesser concern. My thoughts are with the young, those who have their lives ahead of them. War and chaos can erupt anywhere, leaving no place or reason to flee.”

Marian Turski, member of the International Auschwitz Council and Auschwitz survivor, has been speaking in the last few minutes.

In a moving speech rich of cultural references, he said:

One must not be afraid at all. We see in the contemporary world, today and now, a huge rise in antisemitism. That is precisely antisemitism that led to the Holocaust.

He praises American historian Deborah Lipstadt for “her courage, tenacity” in “fighting with Holocaust denial,” including her UK court battle against the discredited British historian, David Irving.

Turski continued:

Let us not fear demonstrating the same courage today when Hamas attempts to deny the massacre of the seventh of October.

Let us not be afraid to oppose the conspiracy theories saying that all the evil of this world results from a plot started by some indefinite social groups, and Jews are often mentioned as one of such.

He ends on a plea to work between countries to resolve conflicts and ensure “a peaceful, safe, and secure life for their children.”

Let us not fear convincing [each other] that one needs to have a vision not only of what is here today, but also what is going to come tomorrow and what will come in several decades.

He gets a standing ovation.

The stream is now live at the top of this blog and here:

Live

The main ceremony is about to being in the next few minutes.

We will bring you the live stream at the top of this page as soon as it starts.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has pledged to “never forget” the victims of the Holocaust in a post on social media ahead of his visit to Auschwitz this afternoon.

Scholz said:

Sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, friends, neighbors, grandparents: more than one million individuals with dreams and hopes were murdered in Auschwitz by Germans. We mourn their deaths. And express our deepest sympathy. We‘ll never forget them. Not today, not tomorrow.

German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier will attend the anniversary event, too.

Greek Jewish community marks the anniversary in Athens

Helena Smith

The few survivors left in Greece – estimated at less than a dozen – have also marked today’s milestone anniversary. The country lost 90% of its Jewish community during the second world war. Most were exterminated at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The community’s rabbi Gabriel Negrin, who attended a wreath laying service at the Holocaust memorial in Athens, told the Guardian:

It is very important to remember all those people [who were lost] so that their memory is a lesson that not only educates us but gives us the strength never to repeat [what happened].

Today is not only a commemoration. It is an opportunity to educate ourselves that light is more important than darkness.

Antisemitism is still rife in Greece with Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials often vandalised.

Over 67,000 Greek Jews died during the four years that the Nazis occupied the southern European country.

“With very few of the survivors still alive, our duty and responsibility to pass onto the younger generation the respect, knowledge and memory of the Holocaust grows ever more important,” the Greek foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The most heinous crime, the mass murder against humanity itself during the second world war must NEVER AGAIN be repeated.”

Lanre Bakare

One of the world’s largest Holocaust archives is accessible online for the first time after a three-year digitisation of much of the collection.

Announced on Holocaust Memorial Day, the Wiener Holocaust Library’s new online platform includes more than 150,000 items collected over nine decades. Users can view letters, pamphlets and photographs that record the rise of fascism in Britain and Europe.

The director of the library, Dr Toby Simpson, said the project had been in the works for more than 10 years and he hoped it would help it find a new audience of scholars and become a “new way of bearing witness in the digital age”.

Britain’s King Charles III has just been to the Jewish Community Centre in Kraków, which he promised to help set up in 2002 and then opened in 2008, and he met with survivors and local leaders.

This is what he had to say:

It is a moment when we recall the depths to which humanity can sink when evil is allowed to flourish, ignored for too long by the world. And it is a moment when we recall the powerful testimonies of Survivors such as Lily Ebert, who so sadly passed away in October, and who collectively taught us to cherish our freedom, to challenge prejudice and never to be a bystander in the face of violence and hate.

In a world that remains full of turmoil and strife, and has witnessed the dangerous re-emergence of antisemitism, there can be no more important message. …

Here in Kraków, from the ashes of the Holocaust, the Jewish community has been reborn. And there is no greater symbol of this rebirth than the Jewish Community Centre, in which we are gathered here today.

Standing on the steps of this wonderfully vibrant Centre some seventeen years ago, having encouraged its construction and taken immense pride in opening it, I was filled with a sense of hope and optimism at the life and energy that coursed through the building. So, returning today, along with World Jewish Relief, of which I am extremely proud to be Patron, that sense of hope and optimism has only grown.

Musk’s call for Germans to ‘move on’ is ‘an insult to the victims of Nazism,’ Yad Vashem head says

Emma Graham-Harrison

Dani Dayan, chair of Israel’s Holocaust memorial centre Yad Vashem, has warned that Elon Musk’s call for Germans to “move on” from guilt about the Holocaust and other Nazi-era crimes was “an insult to the victims of nazism”.

“Contrary to Elon Musk’s advice, the remembrance and acknowledgment of the dark past of the country and its people should be central in shaping German society,” Dayan said in a post on X yesterday, referencing Musk’s remarks at a far right rally in Germany on Saturday.

“Failing to do so is an insult to the victims of nazism and a clear danger to the democratic future of Germany,” Dayan added.

Dayan quoted Elon Musk’s X handle, effectively addressing the billionaire directly with his criticism.

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