More than 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz and historians say that most of them, about one million, were Jewish but the victims also included Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.
Preparations are under way at Auschwitz II-Birkenau to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
The commemoration ceremony will take place on 27 January and will be attended by Holocaust survivors, international guests and Polish authorities.
“The main commemorations at 4pm will begin in a specially-built tent which has been erected over the main gate of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, the infamous Death Gate. In front of this gate stands a historical train car. Such cars were used by the Germans to deport people from almost all of occupied Europe to Auschwitz,” explained Paweł Sawicki, the deputy spokesperson of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.
“We estimate that there will be about 50 people with us. Heads of state delegations and representatives of various international organizations will number more than 60. Guests from many institutions that preserve and care for various memorial sites and museums will also be present. We will listen to the words of survivors, something that is extremely important. There are no speeches by politicians here.”
Earlier this month, the Polish government issued a statement guaranteeing that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not be arrested if he attended the commemoration, despite the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant against him.
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, from the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), wrote to the government requesting that Netanyahu not be arrested if he decided to attend the Auschwitz commemoration on 27 January, a presidential aide said.
The office of Prime Minister Donald Tusk published a resolution saying it would ensure the “safe participation of the leaders of Israel in the commemorations”.
The ICC issued arrest warrants in November last year for Netanyahu and his ex-defence minister, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 15-month war in Gaza.
Member countries of the ICC, such as Poland, are required to detain suspects facing a warrant if they set foot on their soil but the court has no way to enforce that.
Israel is not a member of the ICC and disputes its jurisdiction.
The court has more than 120 member states, although some countries, including France and Hungary, have already said that they would not arrest Netanyahu.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán even said he would defy the warrant by inviting Netanyahu to Budapest.
In July last year, the European Union Agency for Fundamental rights warned that instances of antisemitism had risen across the bloc.
The latest survey was conducted before the war in Gaza started in October 2023 with 80% of respondents saying they felt antisemitism had grown in their country in the five years before the survey.
90% of respondents said they had encountered antisemitism online in the year before the survey, with 37% saying they had been harassed in real life.
After the Israeli military response to the 7 October, 2023, Hamas attacks, some organisations across the EU reported a 400% increase in antisemitic incidents.
“Anti-Semitism is a poison for our community. And it is up to all to fight it, to prevent it and to eradicate it,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The Auschwitz commemorations take place in Oświęcim, a town that was under German occupation during World War II where the Nazi German forces operated the most notorious of their death camps.
More than 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz. Historians say that most of them, about one million, were Jewish, but the victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and others.
At least 3 million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Nearly six million European Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Soviet Red Army troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January, 1945, and the day has become known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
