At the end of her account, the former prisoner recited the poem “Oh, Void Complaints” by Adam Asnyk:
“It is the living we must follow,
And leave the former life beneath.
Abandon the persistence hollow,
Shake off the withered laurel wreath!
Unstopped the waves of life proceeding!
No aid in protests you may raise.
Oh, useless wrath and futile pleading!
The world shall follow its own ways. It is my wish that the young and future generations will not have to follow the path I had to go through.”
Leon Weintraub was born on 1 January 1926 in Łódź. During the war, he and his family were confined in the Litzmannstadt ghetto, and from there they were deported in August 1944 to Auschwitz, where Leon was separated from the rest of the family. After several weeks, he was transferred to Głuszyce, and then to the Dörnhau camp and subsequent labour camps.
'In Auschwitz, in this Nazi camp; a place symbolising the unprecedented cruelty in the treatment of people in the history of civilisation; a place, where the technique of mass and industrial murder was introduced, and where the Nazis implemented their ideology,' he said.
'I feel great pain and bemoan that in many European countries including our country, people march with impunity in uniforms similar to those of the Nazi. Such persons openly call themselves Nazis and identify with Nazism, propagating slogans similar to those of the Nazis. This ideology characterised by the sign of a broken cross murdered those it considered ‘sub-humans’. Acknowledging Nazism today is undoubtedly defining oneself as a murderer and perpetrator of genocide because that is the inevitable outcome of such a mindset, which at first proclaims resentment and hostility toward others and defines racism, antisemitism and homophobia as virtues, as did the followers of Nazism. And to think that this is happening in our country, which encountered so much destruction and suffering during the Nazi occupation,' he said.
'On behalf of myself and the survivors, I represent here today; I wish to thank and express my sincere gratitude to the management of the Auschwitz Museum for their daily and indefatigable activities aimed at preserving the memory of the victims of the Nazi ideology and combating prejudices and hostility towards others,' emphasised Leon Weintraub.
The Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki said during his address: 'The years 1989, 1939 and 2019 are years of round anniversaries. Polish citizens gained independence 30 years ago. However, 80 years earlier, on the orders of Nazi Germany, Poles living in the II Polish Republic did not only lose their freedom but Polish Jews were sentenced to extermination, as well as Poles as their extermination was precisely calculated in the Generalplan Ost - to murder about 85 per cent. The remaining 15 per cent was to be turned into a slave workforce. This annihilation, which took place then was not the work of the Nazis, but Germany ruled by Hitler.'