Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors and other mourners commemorated the 78th anniversary on Friday of the liberation of the Nazi death camp, some expressing horror that war has again shattered peace in Europe.
The former camp, in Oswiecim in southern Poland, became a place of systematic murder of Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma and others targeted for elimination by Hitler during the Second World War.
In all, some 1.1 million people were killed at the vast complex before it was liberated by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945.
Today, the ruined site stands as one of the world’s most recognised symbols of evil and a site of pilgrimage for millions from around the world.
Yet it lies only 185 miles from Ukraine, where Russian aggression is creating unthinkable death and destruction – a conflict on the minds of many this year.
Piotr Cywinski, Auschwitz state museum director, compared Nazi crimes to those the Russians have committed in Ukrainian towns such as Bucha and Mariupol. He said they were inspired by a “similar sick megalomania” and that free people must not remain indifferent.
“Being silent means giving voice to the perpetrators,” he said. “Remaining indifferent is tantamount to condoning murder.”
Russia’s Vladimir Putin attended ceremonies on the 60th anniversary of the camp’s liberation in 2005. This year, no Russian official at all was invited.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has its roots in the post-Second World War neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, called the Holocaust “the abyss of humanity. An evil that also touched our country with the infamy of the racial laws of 1938”.
Among those who attended Friday’s commemorations was Doug Emhoff, the husband of US vice president Kamala Harris. Emhoff, the first Jewish person to be married to one of the top two elected US officials, bowed his head and left a wreath.
The Germans established Auschwitz in 1940 for Polish prisoners; later they expanded the complex, building death chambers and crematoria where Jews from across Europe were brought by train to be murdered.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “The suffering of 6 million innocently murdered Jews remains unforgotten – as does the suffering of the survivors.”
Elsewhere, events marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual commemoration established by the UN in 2005 that also remembers the millions killed in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
The King and Queen Consort lit candles at Buckingham Palace to remember those who suffered “such horrors” during the Holocaust and met Martin Stern who was taken to Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War as a young boy.
“I hope this will be one way of trying to remember all those poor people who had to suffer such horrors for so many years- and still do,” the King said.
The royal couple also met Amouna Adam, from the persecuted Fur tribe, who survived genocide in Darfur in western Sudan, as well as representatives of the Holocaust Memorial Day trust.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
