MAttendees to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz later this month will include the Grand Leader, the President, and the Prime Minister, but they will not be allowed near the microphone.
In a first for a “circular” anniversary of liberation, the Auschwitz Museum has banned all speeches by politicians at the Jan. 27 event, which marks the 80th anniversary of the day Soviet troops liberated the camp in 1945. Only Auschwitz survivors give speeches. It will likely be the last major commemoration when many people are still alive and healthy enough to travel.
“There will be no political speeches,” Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, said in a recent interview with the Guardian. “We want to focus on the last survivors among us, their history, their pain, their trauma, and the ways in which they now impose difficult moral obligations on us. ” he added.
Nevertheless, the current politics swirling around the event threatens to overshadow the memorial service. Earlier this month, Poland’s deputy foreign minister said authorities would be obliged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he traveled to Poland for a ceremony, given the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant on suspicion of war crimes. he suggested.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk pushed back against that threat on Thursday, announcing that Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, could visit the ceremony without fear of arrest, even though Poland is a member state of the ICC.
“The Polish government wishes to ensure the safe participation of Israeli leaders in the commemoration on January 27, 2025, as a tribute to the Jewish people, whose millions of daughters and sons were victims of the Holocaust by the Third Reich. ” read the resolution released by Tusk’s office.
Cywinski described the entire discussion as a “media provocation” and insisted there was no indication that Netanyahu was planning a ceremonial visit in the first place. However, he said a significant number of Israeli delegations are expected to attend the event.
Israel’s continued assault on Gaza is just one of many modern events, making this ceremony a peaceful memorial to the 1.1 million victims, the majority of them Jewish, murdered at Auschwitz. This makes it more complicated to view it as simply a gathering of world leaders.
In 2005, President Vladimir Putin visited the 60th anniversary ceremony and paid tribute to the Soviet soldiers who liberated the camps, saying, “It is unthinkable that people are capable of such barbaric acts.” did. However, this time the Russian delegation was not invited.
Cywinski said that the Red Army soldiers who liberated the camps included both Russians and Ukrainians, and that the war in neighboring Ukraine was therefore “a war waged by one liberator against another.” ”, he pointed out. He said that in the current situation there is no question that the Russian delegation will attend.
“This day is called Liberation Day, but I can’t imagine a country that doesn’t understand the value of freedom would take part in a ceremony commemorating liberation. It’s ironic to put them there. “Deaf,” he said.
He rejected any similarities between Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Israel’s attack on Gaza. “I try not to get politically involved in Auschwitz, and I ask all politicians not to get involved politically in Auschwitz. But of course the situation is completely different,” he said. . He described the war in Ukraine as “one country attacking an innocent, independent country,” and said that while Israel’s attack in Gaza was “tragic,” it was “an attempt to protect itself from a large-scale terrorist attack.” “It’s a country with a lot of people,” he said.
Szywiński, a Polish medieval historian by training, has been in charge of the Auschwitz Museum since 2006 and is used to seeing the museum embroiled in contemporary events, and is no stranger to the right-wing Law and Justice Party. The museum was run through eight years of government by the government. At the time, Holocaust memory frequently became a political battleground.
Now he wants to focus on plans to preserve the museum for future generations. This monument is located on the outskirts of the town of Oświęcim, Poland, and is preserved among the original buildings of the Auschwitz concentration camp and the ruins of the adjacent Birkenau extermination camp.
The visit is a harrowing affair, with displays including more than two tonnes of human hair, piles of suitcases with names written on the sides, and display cases of everyday items from people who arrived at the camp thinking they were starting a new life. . He was killed in a gas chamber. Official guides offer tours in 21 languages.
sign up for this is europe
The most pressing topics and debates for Europeans – from identity to economy to environment
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may include information about charities, online advertising, and content sponsored by external parties. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and are subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
After newsletter promotion
During a visit to the site last year, The Guardian reported that technical experts were working to ensure that the huge and tragic collection of shoes, suitcases, toothbrushes and many other items was cataloged and preserved in the best possible condition. I saw how conservation experts are working methodically.
Work is also underway to add foundations to the many brick barracks at Birkenau. These buildings were erected in a hurry and were not intended to last. “It’s easier to save castles, cathedrals and pyramids than very fragile buildings built during wars,” Cywinski says.
The goal is to ensure the museum endures as one of the most striking reminders of humanity’s capacity to carry out horrific acts, and Cywinski said the warning is more pressing than ever. I feel that there is.
“After the war, memorialization has never been more important than it is now…I think we’re at a huge turning point right now. Everything has changed very, very quickly. And those changes are changing our civilization. It touches on some of the most important elements very deeply. That’s why I think we need very specific points of reference in this day and age,” he said. He believes Auschwitz should be one of those sites.
Last year, Elon Musk toured his X Network after it came under heavy criticism for how it handled anti-Semitic posts. But since that visit, Musk has only increased the spread of misinformation about X. During a live discussion with Musk on stage last Thursday, Alice Weidel of Germany’s far-right party AfD claimed that Adolf Hitler was not right-wing at all, and was in fact right-wing. Communist.
Cywinski declined to specifically mention Musk, but said populist politics and hate speech on social media pose a major threat to modern society. “This is the most important issue of our time…the wise, hard and difficult proposals put forward by philosophers and old-school politicians will likely lose out to the general public with stupid, simplistic populist ideas,” he said. Ta.
Having lived and worked at the scene of some of the worst crimes of the 20th century for nearly 20 years, he finds this situation extremely dangerous.
“Let’s not forget that there were only six years between Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and the start of World War II. Six years of propaganda. And he had no social media or internet. There was no one,” he said.
