Mala, 94, will be Britain’s only Holocaust survivor at the remembrance service in Poland (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
Tearfully honouring six million Jews slaughtered in the survivor Susan Pollack said: “You don’t think you live in a world which does those things.”
The teenage inmate lost more than 50 members of her family – including her mother and father – to Nazi slaughter in the Second World War.
Susan, 94, has dedicated her life to educating others about evil and on the 80th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation will join the world in repeating its cry of never again.
At the gates to hell the 1.1 million men, women and children murdered inside Auschwitz – and all victims of genocide – will be remembered.
On the first visit to the death camp by a reigning British monarch, King Charles will join Holocaust survivors including Michael Bornstein who was just four when he was carried out of the concentration camp in the arms of his grandmother after it was liberated by soldiers from the Soviet Red Army.
In an appeal to the world Mr Bornstein said: “Nothing will be easy about returning to Auschwitz 80 years after I was liberated. This commemoration will be the last of its kind. We will be there. Will you stand with us?”
He will join Charles, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, and Mala Tribich, the only British Holocaust survivor at what will be a deeply moving and emotionally-charged international service of remembrance and reflection.
In the five-and-a-half years after the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, when she was just eight, Mala lost her parents Sara and Moishe, sister Lucia, and most of her extended family.
Mala, incarcerated at Ravensbruck and later Bergen-Belsen, was awarded an MBE from the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2012, and said: “I intend to share my testimony for as long as I am able to, but there will come a time when this is not possible. The memory of the Holocaust cannot be left to fade when us eyewitnesses are no longer able to share our memories.
“As the Holocaust moves further into history future generations [need to] understand why it is important to learn from the past and stand up against injustice.”
Inmates were greeted with a sign that read Arbeit macht frei [Work sets you free] (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
World leaders including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, King Philip and Queen Letizia of Spain, Polish President Andrzej Duda, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will attend the sombre ceremony in Poland.
Survivors will shoulder-to-shoulder in the shadow of the extermination camp’s imposing watchtowers in a solemn act of defiance. It will, in all probability, be the last time many are able to honour the memories of those who perished to state-sponsored evil.
Those who cheated death will recount harrowing and personal testimonies of wicked acts of depravity, degradation and immorality while reiterating a message of hope, defiance and, above all, standing up to prejudice, hate and division wherever it exists and cherishing the freedoms we all take for granted .
Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front, who opened the gates on January 27, 1945. It was then the world saw the unspeakable evil that lurked within.
Although most of the prisoners languishing inside were forced on death marches, about 7,000 were left behind. The soldiers who arrived during a brutal winter 80 years ago were aghast at the scale of Nazi genocide with skeletal prisoners riddled with typhus, tuberculosis, malaria, and dysentery.
The anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is now recognised as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Such was the indescribable horror perpetuated at the death camp that eight decades on it remains a global symbol of genocide and terror.
Inside the meticulously planned network of wooden huts, electrified barbed wire fencing, and extermination blocks, generations of families – brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts and cousins – were ritually humiliated, brutally beaten, tortured, shot, gassed and burned.
But survivors and relatives of those whose lives were snuffed out in the bleak wastelands of Oświęcim, in what was occupied Poland, will pray for peace and a better world.
Those condemned to languish inside Auschwitz had their possessions snatched from them, were stripped naked and had their heads shaved. And in final acts of humiliation were tattooed with prisoner identification numbers.
Those who survived the death camp were riddled with disease and forced on death marches (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
The symbol of the commemoration will be one of the freight cars used to transport Jews to their deaths and which now stands directly in front of the main gate where they arrived in overcrowded cattle carriages under a sign that read Arbeit macht frei [Work sets you free].
Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, told the Express: “This year, on Holocaust Memorial Day, we come together to mark 80 years since the liberation of the extermination and concentration camps of Europe. We remember the six million Jewish men, women, and children who were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators and we honour those who survived and rebuilt their lives after enduring unimaginable horrors.
“The images and accounts that emerged at liberation revealed the full scale of the Nazis’ attempt to annihilate the Jewish people and this gave rise to the enduring call ‘Never Again.’ This phrase embodies the hope that the Holocaust would serve as a stark warning to future generations of the consequences of unchecked hatred and antisemitism.
“As we mark this significant anniversary, the lessons of the Holocaust remain as urgent as ever. With survivors becoming fewer and more frail, and with antisemitism continuing to surge across the world – we must all commit to remembering [Holocaust] victims and must take action to ensure anti-Jewish racism is never again allowed to thrive.”
Dr Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz Museum, said: “Today, as we increasingly distance ourselves from the times of the Second World War, the imagination of young people struggles to comprehend the hell of crowded wagons. In such freight train cars, German Nazis brought people here. These wagons connected ghettos and hiding places with the Place of Death.”