LIVE – 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz: around fifty survivors and dozens of foreign leaders expected

Around fifty survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau are meeting this Monday on the site of this former German Nazi camp, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of its liberation in the final months of the Second World War. Under the historic Birkenau gateway, they will take part in an official ceremony, alongside dozens of leaders, including King Charles III and French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as German Chancellor and President Olaf Scholz and Frank -Walter Steinmeier.

The ceremony which will begin at 4 p.m. will bring together 54 international delegations. “This year we are focusing on survivors and their message”Pawel Sawicki, spokesperson for the Auschwitz museum, told AFP. “There will be no speeches from politicians,” he stressed.

Auschwitz-Birkenau has become the symbol of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany on six million European Jews, a million of whom died at the site between 1940 and 1945, along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.

The camp was established in 1940 in barracks in Oswiecim, in occupied southern Poland, whose name was Germanized to Auschwitz by the Nazis. The first 728 Polish political prisoners arrived there on June 14 of that year. On January 17, 1945, faced with advancing Soviet troops, the SS forced 60,000 emaciated prisoners to march westward in what became known as the “Death March.” From January 21 to 26, the Germans blew up the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau and withdrew. On January 27, Soviet troops arrived and found 7,000 survivors. The day the camp was liberated was proclaimed by the United Nations as Holocaust Remembrance Day.