Auschwitz survivor won’t attend 80th liberation anniversary: ‘I never want to go back there’
Guta Goldstein, 94, was sent to the ‘place of death’ – Auschwitz – the Nazi’s largest WWII concentration camp – at 14. There she lost her parents, grandparents, little sister and extended family.
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Guta Goldstein was just 14 years old when she was sent to the “place of death” – Auschwitz – the largest Nazi-controlled concentration camp of World War II.
“I lost my parents (there), my grandparents, my little sister, two aunts, four uncles and many cousins,” Ms Goldstein said.
“I lost my childhood.”
The now 94-year-old is so deeply traumatised by what she lost – and saw – she cannot bring herself to attend Monday’s 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Polish-based camp.
She will leave it to other holocaust survivors and descendants of the one million Jews killed there instead to “keep their names and memories alive”.
“I did not want to return to Auschwitz, I felt there was no reason for me to do that,” she said from her Melbourne home.
“I remember it all so clearly, I remember my family murdered there.
“I never want to go there again”.
King Charles III, Denmark’s King Frederik and Queen Mary and French President Emmanuel Macron will attend a morning service at the camp, in the country’s south, alongside survivors and descendants.
Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Spain’s King and Her Majesty Queen Letizia are also on the list.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who is Jewish, will represent Australia.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s co-chief executive officer Alex Ryvchin said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should have travelled to Poland for the commemoration.
“Penny Wong and Mark Dreyfus coming here is a good thing and it will deepen their appreciation of Jewish vulnerability and the destructive capacity of anti-Semitism,” he said.
“With an event of this historical stature and particularly with the domestic situation right now with anti-Semitism, it would have sent an extremely strong message to the Australian public if the prime minister came to Poland too”.
Attendees will share their stories and light candles to remember not just those lost to Auschwitz-Birkenau – before it was liberated by the Soviets on January 27, 1945 – but all six million Jews murdered under the Nazi regime.
Prince William will attend a separate ceremony in London to mark the anniversary, while opposition leader Peter Dutton will attend the International Holocaust Remembrance Day service in Perth.
Sky News Australia last week revealed that the Albanese government was originally sending Labor Senator Sue Lines as the head of Australia’s delegation to the Auschwitz memorial but she was later quietly removed.
It was revealed that the senator, who was initially picked to attend, had previously accused Israel of being “apartheid”.
The rise of anti-Semitism in Australia last week saw prime minister Anthony Albanese establish a national taskforce to fight attacks on Jewish communities. It followed an attack on a suburban Sydney kindergarten, which was set on fire and defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti.
The nation’s top cops also have united to take action.
Ms Goldstein said the spread of anti-Semitism “has never gone away”.
“The Holocaust started with words and rhetoric, but if left unchecked, the words become hateful and violent action,” she said.
“We are seeing the hijacking of words in the streets of Melbourne and other cities around the world now.
“Anti-Semitism is an ancient hatred that has never gone away”.
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Originally published as Auschwitz survivor won’t attend 80th liberation anniversary: ‘I never want to go back there’