‘The consequence of being considered different is active persecution’

Oswiwcim, Poland: Leon Weintraub was 13 when his family was sent to the Lodz Ghetto, established by the Nazi Germany for Jews and Roma following its invasion of Poland. He was later transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

His mother and aunt were murdered on the same day of their arrival in the gas chambers.

“We were stripped of all our humanity. We were stripped naked and robbed of all our belongings,” he said from a podium in front of Death Gate, where thousands of prisoners passed twice every day from 1940 to 1945. First time, early in the morning, when they were going to work and the second time, when coming back, often carried by friends because of extreme fatigue.

Holocaust survivor Stanislaw Zalewski.Credit: AP

Now 99, Weintraub lives in Sweden, but like the survivors who spoke before him at the 80th commemoration of the death camp’s liberation, his story is a reminder that despite the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, antisemitism has remained present in Poland – and further afield – ever since.

He described losing his job as a doctor in 1969 because he was Jewish and how he was forced to leave Poland to continue his work. His appeal was to fight intolerance of all kinds and to “be vigilant” and fight back against those who challenge democracy.

“It grieves me deeply to see in many European countries, Nazi style uniforms and slogans openly paraded at marches,” he said, adding: “These people self-proclaim as national champions but at the same time they proclaim the hateful ideology of German Nazis.”

A guard tower stands among barbed wire at the Auschwitz I former concentration camp site in Oswiecim, Poland.Credit: Getty

Weintraub said the world must avoid the mistakes made in the 1930s.

“Be sensitive to all expressions of intolerance or resentment of those who are different, with regards to their skin colour, religion or sexual orientation,” he said, adding: “We, the survivors, understand that the consequence of being considered different is active persecution.”

More than 50 world leaders, including King Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, and Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch, joined a dwindling group of the Nazi death camp’s survivors on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) to commemorate the Soviet Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, where more than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered. Others, including Poles, Russian prisoners of war, Roma and Sinti, and gay and lesbian people, were also marked for annihilation.

Elderly former inmates, some wearing scarves in the blue-and-white stripes of their death camp uniforms, laid flowers at the site, touching the camp’s Wall of Death in silence. Most walked slowly, many with canes or held up by young relatives.

Survivors and global leaders later lit candles at the empty wooden train car which sits on the tracks at Auschwitz. Since 2009, the carriage has stood in the middle of the unloading ramp, where SS doctors selected the deported Jews, directing most of them to their deaths.

The ceremony was conducted in silence, but applause rang out when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, and fighting the Russian invasion of his country, laid his candle.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lays a candle during commemorations at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland to mark 80 years since the liberation of the concentration camp.Credit: Getty

The train car is dedicated to the memory of about 420,000 Jews from Hungary who were sent to Auschwitz from May to July 1944. Among them was Hugo Lowy, father of Australian businessman, Holocaust survivor Frank Lowy, who was beaten to death by the SS in the camp.

“I have carried the torch for his family and remembered him and his action that gave us, me and the family, the courage to carry on,” said Lowy before the service. “Since I was a little boy the knowledge of his resistance has given me reason to live.”

Australian-Israeli businessman Sir Frank Lowy attended the ceremony. Credit: Yadid Levy

Lowy said it served as a reminder of what society must learn from antisemitism.

“We need to respect each other,” he says. “Unfortunately the world has not developed to that effect.”

Tova Friedman, was just six years old when Auschwitz was liberated.

For her “whole life since I was a little girl” she thought of that day “as my birthday,” she told the crowd. “I celebrate it every single year,” Friedman, now 86, added.

Holocaust survivor Tova Friedman.Credit: Getty

Her memory of her time in the camp remains vivid in part because her mother validated her experiences at a young age, Friedman said, adding that she remembered listening to her friends being rounded up while the cries of their parents fell on deaf ears.

“After all the children were gone and the courtyard was empty,” she said, “I thought to myself, am I the only Jewish child left in the world?”

Ronald Lauder, the chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, said this year was “the most important anniversary we are going to have because of the shrinking number of survivors and because of what is happening in the world today.”

In a strongly worded speech, Lauder, a billionaire donor for the Republicans in the United States, warned against the dramatic rise of antisemitism.

Referring directly to the October 7 attacks by Hamas, he said: “In a very fundamental way, what happened in Israel... and what happened here at Auschwitz, have one common thread: the age-old hatred of Jews.”

“Today, there are mass demonstrations against Jews. Today, we see vile comments all over social media. Then I remind you, this is not 1933 or 1939. This is 2025.”

The final act of this ceremony began with the blowing of the shofar, or ram’s horn – a haunting and uniting sound for Jews – which usually heralds the start of the Jewish New Year and the end of Yom Kippur. It was followed by the Jewish mourners’ prayer, Kaddish, recited by Poland’s Chief Rabbi.

Auschwitz museum director, Piotr Cywiński, issued a rallying cry to protect the memory of the Holocaust and Auschwitz.

“Memory hurts. Memory helps. Memory guides. Memory warns. Memory raises awareness. Memory obliges,” he said.

“Do something good – whatever you can, in the best way you can. Do it for others, and … do it without the scope of your abilities. But do something. Act.”

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