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Updated January 27th, 2020 at 16:20 IST

Holocaust survivors gather 75 years after liberation

Survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp gathered Monday for commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, using the testimony of survivors to warn about the signs of rising anti-Semitism and hatred in the world today.

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Survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp gathered Monday for commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, using the testimony of survivors to warn about the signs of rising anti-Semitism and hatred in the world today.

In all, more than 200 survivors of the camp are expected, many of them elderly Jews who have travelled far from homes in Israel, the United States, Australia, Peru, Russia, Slovenia and elsewhere. Many lost parents and grandparents in Auschwitz or other Nazi death camps, but today were being joined in their journey back by children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.

Most of the 1.1 million people murdered by the Nazi German forces were Jewish, but among those imprisoned, there were also Poles and Russians, and they will also be among those at the commemoration on Monday led by Polish President Andrzej Duda and the head of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder.

Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on 27 January 1945.

World leaders gathered in Jerusalem last week to mark the anniversary in what many saw as a competing observance. Among them were Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Vice President Mike Pence, French President Emmanuel Macron and Britain's Prince Charles.

Politics intruded on that event, with Duda boycotting it in protest after Putin claimed that Poland played a role in triggering World War II. Duda had wanted a chance to speak before or after to Putin to defend his nation's record in face of those false accusations, but he was not given a speaking slot in Jerusalem.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected at the event at Auschwitz, which is located in southern Poland, a region under German occupation during the war.

On the eve of the commemorations, survivors, many leaning on their children and grandchildren for support, walked through the place where they had been brought in on cattle cars and suffered hunger, illness and near death. They said they were there to remember, to share their histories with others, and to make a gesture of defiance toward those who had sought their destruction.

For some, it is also the burial ground for their parents and grandparents, and they will be saying kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

(Image credit: AP)

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Published January 27th, 2020 at 16:20 IST

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