Elderly former inmates gather for perhaps final time and urge vigilance against resurgent European far right
Stanisław Zalewski, whose scarf carries the stripes of the Auschwitz-Birkenau prison uniforms, was one of several Holocaust survivors who was able to attend the ceremony.Stanisław Zalewski, whose scarf carries the stripes of the Auschwitz-Birkenau prison uniforms, was one of several Holocaust survivors who was able to attend the ceremony.
Leon Weintraub, 99, who managed to sneak out of Auschwitz by joining a group of prisoners working outside the camp, urged vigilance against a resurgent European far right with its ideology of “hostility and resentment” against all who are different. Antisemitism “had its willing supporters then, and it has them now,” he said. When Auschwitz was liberated, the world saw where “the step-by-step progress of antisemitism leads. It leads right here … Things are not OK.”
Among them were presidents Emmanuel Macron of France, Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, Sergio Mattarella of Italy and Alexander van der Bellen of Austria; they were joined by the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and prime ministers from Canada, Croatia and Ireland.The members of royalty in attendance included King Charles of Britain, Felipe of Spain, Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, Philippe of Belgium, Frederik of Denmark and Haakon of Norway, as well as Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden.
Since the occupying Nazi Germans had “built this extermination industry and this concentration camp” on their country’s land, said Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, “we Poles are today the guardians of memory”. The continent’s increasingly polarised politics, and the success of nativist parties, have also turned the remembrance of Nazi crimes into an intensely political issue.
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