Auschwitz survivors share tales of horror ahead of 80th anniversary of camp’s liberation
Holocaust survivors joining world leaders, royalty and international dignitaries in Poland to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
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Holocaust survivor Barbara Wojnarowska-Gautier was just three years old when she was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp and subjected to the disturbing experiments of Nazi doctor Dr Josef Mengele.
Living in Poland’s capital Warsaw at the time, the 84-year-old was among 13,000 Poles deported to Auschwitz and endured years of pure evil that can never be erased from her memories.
Together with her mother they were eventually freed from Auschwitz by the Soviet Army on January 27, 1945 when the camp was finally liberated.
But sadly for Ms Wojnarowska-Gautier the terror didn’t end there – she got lost at a Red Cross reception centre and was separated from her mother.
It wasn’t until four years later her mum remarkably found her an orphanage and the pair were reunited.
Ms Wojnarowska-Gautier’s horrifying story is one so many harrowing ordeals from survivors who have spoken ahead of the 80th commemoration of the liberation of the death camp on Monday.
Auschwitz is the barbed-wired site where more than one million Jews were murdered during a five-year period during World War II until the camp was liberated by the Red Army 80 years ago.
World leaders, royals, dignitaries and Holocaust survivors will descend on Poland to attend the commemoration event including King Charles III, Denmark’s King Frederik and Queen Mary, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the United States’ special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus will represent Australia at the commemoration after Labor quietly dumped Senator Sue Lines from attending – it was revealed she had previously accused Israel of being “apartheid”.
The 90-minute commemoration on Monday at Auschwitz-Birkenau, located 50km west of Krakow, begins at 4pm local time (Tuesday 2am) and will open with a welcome address by camp survivor Josef Kroprinski.
Many Auschwitz survivors will then speak followed by political activist Ronald S. Lauder who will address the service on behalf of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum’s major donors.
There will be prayers and tributes to the victims by the survivors and delegated heads of state.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s co-chief executive officer Alex Ryvchin has been in Poland for the past week, viewing many historic sites where many Jews were murdered and he described it as “chilling place to be”.
“Every place you go, every little town and village has a site where the Jews were gathered and either deported to a death camp or burned alive in barns or shot in forest pits,” Mr Ryvchin said.
Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum’s deputy spokesman Pawel Sawicki – who has worked at the centre for 17 years – said the centre has about 850 employees to help preserve the horrifying memories and conceded it’s a job that comes with much more emotional baggage than most occupations.
More than 1.8 million people visited the museum last year.
Sky News Australia will broadcast a replay of the commemoration on Tuesday at 3pm AEDT.
– With Agencies.
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Originally published as Auschwitz survivors share tales of horror ahead of 80th anniversary of camp’s liberation
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