Auschwitz survivors return to camp as they and world leaders mark 80th anniversary of its liberation – live | Holocaust

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is not in Auschwitz today, but in Bahrain where she is due to talk about bilateral cooperation and illegal migration after similar meetings in Saudi Arabia over the weekend.

But in a strongly worded statement in Italian, published on her government’s website, she warned that “antisemitism was not defeated with the destruction of the gates of Auschwitz,” calling it “a scourge that has survived the Shoah, and has taken on different forms and is spread through new tools and channels.”

She also noted Italy’s responsibility as she recalled that the Holocause was “conducted by the Hitler regime, which in Italy also found the complicity of the fascist one, through the infamy of the racial laws and involvement in the round-ups and deportations.”

AFP notes that as a young activist in 1996, Meloni said she believed World War II-era fascist ruler Benito Mussolini had been a “good politician”. She now claims that those nostalgic for fascism “have no place” in Italian political life.

Italy will be represented in Auschwitz by the country’s president, Sergio Mattarella.

‘Everyone’s mission … to prevent evil from winning,’ Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says

Jon Henley

Amid a host of official statements on Holocaust Memorial Day, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has confirmed he will be at this afternoon’s commemorations in Auschwitz, has warned that memories of the Shoah are growing weaker and said some countries are still trying to destroy entire nations.

“We must overcome the hatred that gives rise to abuse and murder. We must prevent forgetfulness,” Zelenskyy said in a statement. “And it is everyone’s mission to do everything possible to prevent evil from winning,” he added.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Russia’s invasion of its neighbour in 2022 “brought back to Ukrainian soil horrors that Europe has not seen since the second world war”. The Holocaust decimated Ukraine’s Jewish community, part of the Soviet Union during the second world war.

The European Council, which brings together the heads of state or government of the 27-nation bloc, warned in a statement that the continent was witnessing “an unprecedented increase in antisemitism on our continent not seen since the second world war” as well as an “alarming rise in … Holocaust denial and distortion, as well as conspiracy theories and prejudice against Jews”.

More than ever, the Council said, it is “crucial that we uphold our responsibility to honour the victims of the Holocaust.” Respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights – including those of minority groups – “must and will guide our actions at all times, in line with the values upon which our European Union is founded. Never again is now.”

I have explained earlier why no Russian delegation was invited to attend this year’s anniversary (9:35), with Auschwitz museum director Piotr Cywiński saying that as both Russians and Ukrainians were among the Red Army troops who liberated the camp, and that the war in neighbouring Ukraine is “a war conducted by one liberator against another”.

He added that he did not think that “a country that does not understand the value of liberty has something to do at a ceremony dedicated to the liberation.”

But this did not stop Russian president Vladimir Putin from hailing Soviet soldiers for ending the “total evil” of Auschwitz this morning.

“We will always remember that it was the Soviet soldier who crushed this terrible, total evil and won the victory, the greatness of which will forever remain in world history,” Putin said, according to the Kremlin.

‘It’s a cold, bright morning in Oświęcim’

Jon Henley

Let’s go back to Auschwitz for a moment to hear from our Europe correspondent, Jon Henley, who is there:

It’s a cold, bright morning in Oświęcim, and we’ve just seen some of the 50 or so survivors who are attending the day’s events, some wearing blue-and-white striped scarves recalling their camp uniforms, light candles and lay wreaths at the Death Wall in the yard of Auschwitz Block 11, where thousands of inmates were executed by firing squad.

More than 1,000 journalists are accredited for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and with royalty, heads of state and government and other dignitaries from more than 50 countries attending the main ceremony this afternoon, security is exceptionally tight.

Kings Charles III of Britain, Felipe of Spain, Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, Philippe of Belgium, Frederik of Denmark, Haakon of Norway and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden are among the crowned heads expected, along with presidents Emmanuel Macron of France, Alexander von der Bellen of Austria, Sergio Mattarella of Italy and Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz will also attend, as will other prime ministers from nations including Canada, Croatia and Ireland, while other countries are sending ministers of foreign affairs or ambassadors. Israel is represented by education minister Yoav Kisch and the US by special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The presidents of the European Parliament and Council are also attending.

That kind of audience means that apart from the TV cameras, the rest of the media – after a thorough frisking by Polish police – is in a huge white marquee on the edge of the camp.

The main ceremony starts at 4pm local time.

Two people were killed by falling trees during the record-breaking gusts of Storm Éowyn, which also damaged property and led to widespread power cuts across the UK and Ireland.

246,000 premises in Ireland are still without power on Monday morning, as the country reels off one of the strongest storms in a generation, with record-breaking wind speeds that brought widespread travel problems, power cuts and significant damage to infrastructure.

Talking about “regional defence and security cooperation,” the Baltic states mobilised on Sunday after an undersea fibre optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged.

Riga has said it was probably as a result of external influence, prompting Nato to deploy patrol ships to the area and triggering a sabotage investigation by Swedish authorities.

Sweden’s security service has seized control of a vessel as part of the inquiry, the country’s prosecution authority said.

Nato said last week it would deploy frigates, patrol aircraft and naval drones in the Baltic Sea to help protect critical infrastructure and reserved the right to take action against ships suspected of posing a security threat after repeated security incidents in the area.

European Commission’s vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy Henna Virkkunen has been speaking about the incident this morning:

EU Commission is taking hybrid threats very seriously, such as a recent one in the Baltic Sea. I want to commend Latvian and Swedish authorities for their very quick action.

Protection of critical infrastructure and also investigation of the incidents is responsibility of the member states, but commission is willing and capable to support member states. Our tools, they include operational support, financial support, and also information sharing.

We have to be prepared for very different hybrid threats … We are really living in times when everything can be weaponised, and now we have to take more actions to really prevent [attacks on] our critical infrastructures.

US president Donald Trump repeated his intention to take control over Greenland over the weekend, saying he thought the US “are going to have it,” and sparking further fears about the prospect of a territorial dispute between the US and Denmark, a Nato ally.

“I do believe Greenland, we’ll get because it really has to do with freedom of the world,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the United States, other than we’re the one that can provide the freedom.”

His latest comments follow a “horrendous” phone call with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, during which Trump was said to be aggressive and confrontational in his attempt to take over the island.

Trump was reported to have threatened Denmark with targeted tariffs, essentially taxes on Danish exports to the US, according to a report in the Financial Times.

On Sunday, Frederiksen held an unexpected show-of-unity meeting of Nordic leaders in Copenhagen, with Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson, Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre, and Finnish president Alexander Stubb all coming over for dinner.

In a post on Facebook after the meeting, she said they shared their concern about “the seriousness of the situation” when it comes to “regional defence and security cooperation” (what could she possibly mean?), but also sought to reassure Danes by saying “we must remember that Denmark is not alone.”

The issue could come up at the meeting of EU ministers today. I will keep an eye on this and let you know if we have more.

On Friday, I left you with the news that tens of thousands of Slovaks were protesting against Robert Fico’s government after a tumultuous week that started with an ultimately abandoned (for now) attempt by the opposition parties to force a vote of confidence on its future.

Over the weekend, Fico suffered further political losses, with four lawmakers refusing to vote with the government until their political demands (nothing to do with the protests) were met, effectively leaving the prime minister short of a majority in the Národná rada. Michal Šimečka, leader of the opposition, jumped on the development to repeat his call for a snap election.

But on Sunday, deputy prime minister and environment minister Tomáš Taraba sought to play down fears that the latest crisis could bring Fico’s government down, telling TV Markíza that the negotiations with the rebels were ongoing and the two sides were “not far from a deal.”

I will keep an eye on this.

Alexander Lukashenko has secured a seventh five-year term as Belarusian president in a resounding election victory that western governments have rejected as a sham.

Exit polls on Sunday showed Lukashenko winning 103% 87.6% of the vote.

In the last hour, Russian president Vladimir Putin congratulated him on a “convincing” re-election showing he had the “undoubted” backing of the people. “You are always a welcome and dear guest on Russian soil,” he said.

But the EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, was less impressed and said Sunday’s “sham election” had been “neither free, nor fair” and that the EU would maintain sanctions against the regime.

The EU will continue imposing restrictive and targeted measures against the regime, while financially supporting civil society, Belarusian democratic forces in exile, and Belarusian culture. Once Belarus embarks on a democratic transition, the EU is ready to support the country stabilise its economy and reform its institutions.

Belarusian opposition organised major protests against the vote, with the biggest one taking part in Warsaw, attended by the exiled leader of the Belarusian democratic opposition, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Now let’s briefly take a look at other topics today.

One issue that EU foreign ministers will need to tackle at their Brussels meeting which is due to start any moment now is extending the bloc’s sanctions against Russia, which will expire at the end of the month.

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has been threatening to obstruct the extension as he wants to put pressure on Ukraine to change its decision to block the transit of Russian gas to Europe.

“I have put on the handbrake and asked European leaders to understand that this cannot continue,” he told a Hungarian radio.

“We asked the EU to tell the Ukrainians to restore the gas transit. What is closed has to be reopened. It is not a matter for Ukraine, it is an issue for Europe, for central Europe, and if the Ukrainians want help, for example sanctioning the Russians, then let’s reopen the transit routes.”

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, once a close friend of Orban, warned him over the weekend against any such move saying that if he “really blocks European sanctions at a key moment for the war, it’ll be absolutely clear that in this big game for the security and future of Europe, he is playing in Putin’s team, not in ours.”

But EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has just been speaking to the media, and she is hopeful of overcoming Hungary’s block this morning, with speculations that one compromise solution could include a separate statement on energy security.

“I expect a decision to rollover the sanctions we have,” Kallas said, Reuters reported.

While Germany, Austria, which was annexed by Germany in 1938, and Italy, whose dictator Benito Mussolini formed an alliance with Hitler, will all be represented at the ceremony, Russia, which had attended the annual event until 2022, will not.

In an interview with the Guardian earlier this month, Auschwitz museum director Piotr Cywiński pointed out that both Russians and Ukrainians were among the Red Army troops who liberated the camp, and that the war in neighbouring Ukraine is therefore “a war conducted by one liberator against another”.

He said there was no question of any Russian delegation attending in the current climate.

“It’s called the day of liberation, and I do not think that a country that does not understand the value of liberty has something to do at a ceremony dedicated to the liberation. It would be cynical to have them there.”

Jon Henley

Our Europe correspondent Jon Henley is in Auschwitz today.

This is what he wrote in his report ahead of today’s event:

About 50 former inmates are expected to attend the ceremony at the complex in southern Poland where Nazi Germany murdered more than a million people, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war and gay people.

An audience including Britain’s King Charles III, King Felipe VI of Spain and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, as well as France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will hear their voices.

“This year, we are focusing on the survivors and their message,” said Paweł Sawicki, the Auschwitz museum spokesperson. “We all know that for the 90th anniversary, it will not be possible to have a large group. There will not be any speeches by politicians.”

Besides the survivors, only Piotr Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum and memorial, and Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, representing key donors, are due to speak during the 90-minute ceremony.

The commemoration has added significance not just because most survivors are in their 90s and will not be able to tell their stories for much longer, but because today’s continuing wars, and increasingly polarised politics, make their testimony as vital as ever.

In a very moving piece published over night, three Auschwitz survivors, two of whom were interned there as teenagers, tell our Berlin correspondent Kate Connolly their stories.

This is what Albrecht “Albi” Weinberg, 99, told Kate:

Not a day goes by when I don’t think about my family. There are now Stolpersteine in front of our former family house, which are the closest thing I have to a gravestone where I can feel close to them.

I’m taken back to Auschwitz every day when I look in the mirror while washing my face and I see my tattoo.

Make sure to read the piece in full.

The Auschwitz anniversary is starting just now with a morning commemoration at the “wall of death” at the end of the block 11’s yard, attended by Auschwitz survivors and Polish president Andrzej Duda.

We are carrying the Auschwitz museum’s live stream at the top of this blog.

A moment to pause

Jakub Krupa

Europe and the world will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz today, putting the increasingly chaotic global politics on pause for a brief moment to reflect on the darkest moments of our history.

But in a growingly polarised and aggressive world, the ceremony will also for many be a call for action and renewal of our collective memory. As the last survivors inevitably fade away, many fear that we risk forgetting the horrors of the Holocaust and the founding pledge on which Europe built the postwar order: never again.

A recent poll found that a stark proportion of young adults aged 18-29 had not heard of the Holocaust: 46% in France, 15% in Romania, 14% in Austria and 12% in Germany.

Many are unable to name Auschwitz or any of the other concentration camps and ghettoes where the crimes of the Holocaust were committed.

And even among those who had, many encountered Holocaust denial or distortion, particularly online, reported by 47% in Poland, 38% in Germany, and 33% in the US.

The anniversary comes at a particularly hectic time, with some prominent voices daring to go further than ever in seemingly questioning the importance of reflecting on the past for our decisions today.

Over the weekend, close US president ally and billionaire Tesla and X owner Elon Musk told a rally organised by the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) that “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents.”

His comments, just days after he sparked controversy with his apparent use of a salute banned for its Nazi links in Germany, were perceived as echoing the party’s line that Germans should stop apologising for the past. The AfD’s co-founder Alexander Gauland once infamously said the Nazi period was like a “small bird dropping in over 1,000 years of successful German history.”

AfD is currently projected to come second in next month’s parliamentary election, only behind the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the latest sign of far-right parties making sweeping gains across Europe.

On a diplomatic level, the presence of over 50 national delegations led by royals and heads of states and governments, including British monarch Charles III, Spanish king Felipe VI, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and Italy’s Sergio Mattarella, will send a clear signal.

But by the decision of the Auschwitz museum, none of these leaders will speak at the event. Instead, we will only hear from the survivors and the custodians of their memory.

I will bring you the build up to the ceremony and then the key lines from the main event, which starts at 4pm CET.

Until then, we have lots to cover in EU politics with new comments from Trump on Denmark and Greenland, EU foreign affairs ministers meeting to discuss what to do with the new US administration and how best to help Ukraine, and the completely surprising news that Alexander Lukashenko ‘won’ in Belarus again, for the seventh consecutive time.

It’s Monday, 27 January 2025, and this is Europe live. It’s Jakub Krupa here.

Good morning.