TODAY, ONCE AGAIN, COMES THE TIME FOR ESSENTIAL HUMAN CHOICES. 78TH ANNIVERSARY OF LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ
The main theme of the anniversary was the process of planning, creating and expanding the system of dehumanisation and genocide at Auschwitz, which was particularly strongly defined by the words of survivor Marian Turski 'Auschwitz did not fall from the sky'.
The witnesses of history were accompanied, among others, by Minister Wojciech Kolarski from the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland and other representatives of state authorities from Poland, the Second Gentleman of the United States Douglas Emhoff, the Minister of Culture of Slovenia Asta Vrečko, the Secretary of State for Veterans' affairs and Memory from France Patricia Mirallès, ambassadors and diplomats, representatives of the clergy, regional authorities, local governments, employees of museums and memorial sites.
While the function of Auschwitz as an extermination center was taking shape in 1942, in 1943 the scale of operation became industrial. In the spring of that year, the Germans completed the construction of four installations at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, which included gas chambers and modern facilities for cremating corpses.
Two Auschwitz Survivors spoke during the commemoration event: Dr. Eva Umlauf and Zdzisława Włodarczyk.
Eva Umlauf was born in the Novaky labour camp in 1942. She was deported to Auschwitz on 3 November 1944 in
a transport of Jews from Sered in Slovakia, together with her whole family as
a two-year-old child. She was liberated on 27 January 1945.
In her address, she recounted the wartime fate of her family and shared personal reflections on the importance of memory.
‘All other members of the family were not that lucky – apart from me and my Mum nobody survived; my sister, Nora was born shortly after the liberation, in April 1945. All my mother’s siblings were murdered, she said.
‘Auschwitz is the subject which is so much moving and so much distressful, the atrocity of which cannot be comprehended – either rationally or emotionally. The fact that
I confront with “Auschwitz inside me” and “Auschwitz in a German society “, is understandable. For me, Auschwitz is
a traumatizing element of my own biography, my emotional heritage. And this emotional heritage will not end with me. It will be transferred from one generation to another. I must ensure that this heritage should not be transferred onto my sons, my granddaughters or people around me,’ said Eva Umlauf.
‘My engagement for a peaceful future full of human respect is necessary for me. Auschwitz cannot be repeated. Yet, proclaiming only “Never again” is not enough! The solidified division between those who push atrocities away from them, and those who confront with atrocities, must be worked through together.
I am one of the persons concerned, so I want to bring my own contribution. I know that hatred and exclusion of individuals or groups will always lead to aggression and war. We know that a bridge is needed between various groups or ideologies to close the gap within the empathy between the differences most,’ she said.
Zdzisława Włodarczyk was born on 21 August 1933. After the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising on 1 August 1944, her family was arrested by the Germans and deported to Auschwitz on 8 August 1944, in one of the first transports from Warsaw. She was liberated on 27 January 1945.
‘When we were pushed to the fright carriages, being taken from the transition camp in Pruszków, someone asked aloud: where will we go? The answer was: to a village near Krakow. We were going for a long time. My father tried to watch the train route through
a chink between the planks. It was already
a twilight, when I heard my father’s desperate scream. He held his head in the hands, beating it against the wall of the carriage, shouting: God, where did they take us, where did they take us? I looked through the chink and saw a white plaque with a black inscription: Auschwitz, said Zdzisława Włodarczyk.
‘Nights were the worst. The children were crying that they were cold and hungry. With time, they became silent, because they knew that no one and nothing would help them. Mothers would not come,’ she added.
‘Today, when I stand in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, I am frightened when I follow the news coming from the East about the war. The Russian army, that liberated us here, now wages war in Ukraine. Why? Why?’ concluded Zdzisława Włodarczyk.
The last speaker was Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, the director of the Museum.
‘Our world proved to be fragile in the age of murderous antisemitism, Übermensch ideology and a craving for the so-called Lebensraum. Our world continues to be fragile. Here we are, we stand with you, Dear Survivors, you who have walked the darkest path of war. And it is difficult for us to stand here. More difficult than before. First, war violates treaties, then borders, finally people. Civilian victims, dehumanised, terrorised, humiliated, they do not die by chance. They are taken hostage by wartime megalomania,’ director Cywiński said.
‘The Warsaw district of Wola, Zamojszczyzna, Oradour and Lidice, now bear different names: Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel, Mariupol and Donietsk. Similar sick megalomania, similar lust for power. And almost same-sounding myths of exceptionalism, of greatness, of primacy… but written in Russian,’ he underlined.
‘Being silent means giving voice to the perpetrators, staying neutral means reaching out to the rapist, remaining indifferent is tantamount to condoning murder. And today, before our very eyes, our memory is putting us to the test. Today we can clearly see which door is opening, and which remains closed,’ said Piotr Cywiński.
‘In the first generation after the war, the Rolling Stones sang:
War, children, it's just a shot away,
I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away.
We need to realise that every gesture of ours is as significant as a lack thereof. There is a choice in everything. Today, once again, comes the time for essential human choices. And only in our memory can we find the key to the choices we are making,’ concluded the director of the Museum.
The second part of the commemoration event took place at the ruins of gas chamber and crematorium IV. Rabbis and clergymen of various Christian denominations said prayers. Participants laid candles by the ruins in memory of all the victims of Auschwitz.
Earlier on 27 January, Survivors together with the directors and staff of the Auschwitz Memorial laid wreaths in the courtyard of Block 11 at the Auschwitz I site. State delegations also visited the Memorial. In addition to Second Gentleman of the United States Douglas Emhoff, the US delegation included the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt and the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Ellen Germain.
Until the liberation of the camp by soldiers of the Red Army, German Nazis murdered approx. 1.1 million people in Auschwitz, mostly Jews, but also Poles, the Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and people of other nationalities. Auschwitz is to the world today, a symbol of the Holocaust and atrocities of World War II. In 2005, the United Nations adopted 27 January as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.
On January 27, a group of 18 Auschwitz and Holocaust Survivors met at the former Auschwitz camp to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the liberation of this German Nazi concentration and extermination camp. The event was held under the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda.
Paweł Sawicki