Around 50 survivors from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp will gather today at the site of the former Nazi German concentration camp to commemorate the 80th anniversary of its liberation during the final months of World War II.
The survivors will participate in the official ceremony, alongside several dozen world leaders, including British King Charles III, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor and President Olaf Scholz and Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Serbia will be represented by Foreign Minister Marko Djuric.
The ceremony, which will begin at 3:00 PM today, will gather 54 international delegations.
Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against six million European Jews, of whom one million died at the site between 1940 and 1945, along with more than 100,000 people of non-Jewish origin.
The camp was established in 1940 in a barracks in Oswiecim, in occupied southern Poland, which the Nazis Germanized to Auschwitz. The first 728 Polish political prisoners arrived there on June 14 of that year.
On January 17, 1945, facing the advancing Soviet forces, the Nazis forced 60,000 weak and ill prisoners to march westward, an event later known as the “Death March.”
From January 21 to 26, the Germans blew up the gas chambers and crematoria in Birkenau and withdrew.
Soviet forces arrived at the camp on January 27 and found 7,000 survivors.
The United Nations declared the day of the camp’s liberation as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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Until the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian delegation regularly attended the anniversary ceremonies, but has not been invited for the past three years. This decision was strongly criticized by Moscow.
Controversy also surrounded rumors about the possible participation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the ceremony.
Last year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over allegations of crimes against humanity and war crimes during the Gaza Strip conflict.
At the request of Polish President Andrzej Duda, the Polish government confirmed last month that it would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited Auschwitz, although it appears the Israeli prime minister has no intention of doing so.
Israel will be represented by Minister of Education Yoav Kish.
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Source: N1, Foto: Pixabay