On January 27, on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, official commemorations took place in front of the Death Gate, with the participation of about 300 Survivors – witnesses of the history of Auschwitz. Leaders of over 40 countries were present at the event, to honour the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
Survivors in their speeches – testimonies of the horror of the concentration camps and the immense will of survival – described the hell they had gone through. Halina Birenbaum, Israeli poet born in Warsaw, deported to Auschwitz at the age of 14, recalled “Countless times, I was dying, freezing with fear, pain, stress of selection, watching the torment and agony of my fellow female prisoners, my neighbors from overcrowded bunks, who shared the same fate in this indescribable, endless horror, where every minute was a century and an imploring question: will there be another one?”.
Kazimierz Albin, who was deported to the Auschwitz camp on June 14, 1940 in the first group of Polish political prisoners, said that “From the very first day, there is an ongoing struggle for biological survival, for delivering as many lives as possible from death, for preserving human dignity”.
Roman Kent, who was deported by the Germans to Auschwitz from the Litzmannstadt ghetto, said he did not know how much time his had spent in Auschwitz. “What I do know is that a minute in Auschwitz was like an entire day, a day was like a year, and a month an eternity. How many eternities can one person have in a single lifetime – I don’t know the answer to that either”.
But those survivors, who keep the memory of Auschwitz alive, talked also about the obligation to remember the past and to take lessons from the Holocaust. Halina Birenbaum noted that there is always a risk that the worst can happen. “The evil of Auschwitz, unacknowledged, unfathomable, flickers peacefully and is reborn in the growing terror, antisemitism, racism, up to the public, unpunished beheading of people in front of the eyes of the whole world just because they are different. I answer myself – often stupefied because of what is now happening around us – that if Auschwitz could have come into being and functioned legally and unpunishedly for years, then the worst is possible. And one cannot be surprised with anything, but one must recognize early enough, explicitly oppose and hedge up the way to further tragedies, lawlessness and crimes”, she said.
Roman Kent pointed out that Auschwitz is a lesson to learn and to be taught to future generations: “It is our mutual obligation, that of survivors and national leaders, to instill in the current and future generations the understanding of what happens when virulent prejudice and hatred are allowed to flourish. We must all teach our children tolerance and understanding at home and in school. For tolerance cannot be assumed …. it must be taught. And we must make it clear that hate is never right and love is never wrong!”. He also warned against the temptation of being indifferent: if I had the power, I would add an Eleventh Commandment to the universally accepted Ten Commandments: “You should never, never be a bystander”.