A solemn ceremony at Auschwitz, during the rise of Nationalism

More than 50 world leaders, including King Charles III, will join a dwindling group of survivors of the Nazi death camp in southern Poland on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz. More than 1.1 million peoplemostly Jews were killed.

The ceremony, overshadowed by the resurgence of nationalism in Germany and several other European countries, will be held near the former gas chamber and crematorium in Oswiecim, Poland. Poland.

The commemoration will begin early Monday with the laying of wreaths at the Wall of Death by Auschwitz survivors, who numbered in the thousands at the end of World War II in 1945 but have since died. wall, in the courtyard between the former barracks, where prisoners were executed by SS guards and where remains riddled with bullet holes.

Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, said in an interview that “this is the most important anniversary we will ever have of the dwindling number of survivors and why. is happening in the world today.”

“We thought the virus of anti-Semitism was dead,” he said, “but it was just lurking.”

Fewer than 50 survivors will attend Monday’s memorial service, less than half of those who attended the 75th anniversary. “There will be very few people left in five years,” Mr Lauder said. “Those still alive won’t have the energy to go.”

However, the number of foreign dignitaries is steadily increasing. This year’s guest list, the largest ever, includes many government leaders and at least eight kings and queens. Among them are Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz and its President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Mr. Scholz’s likely successor, Friedrich Merz, is also expected.

With Germany’s general election less than a month away, Mr. Scholz, Mr. Merz and other mainstream German politicians are fighting to block support for the Alternative for Germany party, known as the AfD, a broad right-wing party. A dangerous return to the nationalism that brought Hitler to power in the 1930s.

AfD politicians and Elon Musk, President Trump’s senior adviser, speaking via video linkurged Germans not to feel guilty for the crimes committed by their grandparents during the Nazi era.

On Sunday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said calls for a “Greater Germany” at a rally “sound very familiar and disappointing, especially just hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”

None of the leaders will speak at Monday’s event. As part of the anniversary events The house where the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz lived with his family The film, the subject of the Oscar-winning movie “Zone of Interest,” will be open to visitors for the first time after being sold by its Polish owners to the New York-based Counter-Extremism Project.

Piotr Cywinski, a Polish historian and director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, said his state institution wanted to avoid political speeches and put survivors and the memory of Nazi victims at the center of Monday’s events.

“Memory,” he said in an interview, “isn’t just crying when you look at the past, it’s not just empathy when you look at the victims. That’s not enough. Memory, I think, is really the key to today and the key to finding your place today.”

The US delegation will be led by President Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who played a key role in negotiating the recent Gaza cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, and Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary. The delegation also includes Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, and Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to France, Charles Kushner.

Russia, which has previously been a regular at Auschwitz commemorations, was not invited to this year’s commemoration despite the Soviet Army liberating the camp in January 1945. A large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin based it on the false pretext that Ukraine, whose president was Jewish, was ruled by the Nazis. Ukraine has been invited and will be represented by its President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Under President Vladimir V. Putin, Russia has turned the Soviet role in defeating Hitler into a national cult in which anyone who opposes the Kremlin is branded a Nazi. It is never mentioned that the Soviet Union was actually Hitler’s ally until 1941, when the Nazis began gassing Jews at Auschwitz. Moscow and Berlin signed a non-aggression pact in 1939, which led to Nazi and Soviet forces invading Poland later that year.

Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, criticized the Polish organizers of the commemoration on Monday, saying that “your life, your work, your entertainment and the existence of your people, your children, were paid for with the blood of Soviet soldiers. The Third Reich”.

Pro-Ukrainian voices on social networks responded by claiming that Ukrainian soldiers, not Russia, liberated Auschwitz. The first troops to reach the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination complex were here 60th Army of the First Ukrainian FrontSoviet army made up of soldiers from all over the Soviet Union. They liberated the main camp at Auschwitz, nearby Birkenau, and about 7,000 prisoners. Labor camp in Monowitz.

Palestinian supporters also intervened in Middle East political struggles by demanding that Poland arrest members of an Israeli delegation expected to be led by Education Minister Yoav Kish for what they called “genocide” in Gaza. Last year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Although Mr Netanyahu is not expected to attend, the Polish government has announced that all Israeli officials arriving this month will be safe from jail.

Anatol Magdziarz He prepared a report from Warsaw.