Politics threatening to overshadow Auschwitz 80th anniversary commemoration event
Israel’s continuing assault on Gaza is only one of many contemporary events that makes it more complicated to regard the ceremony as simply a gathering of world leaders in quiet commemoration of the 1.1 million people who were killed at Auschwitz, the vast majority of whom were Jewish.
Monarchs, presidents and prime ministers are expected among the attendees at a commemoration event for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz later this month, but none of them will be let near a microphone.
In a first for a “round” anniversary of the liberation, the Auschwitz museum has banned all speeches by politicians at the event on January 27, which will mark 80 years since the day Soviet troops liberated the camp in 1945. Only Auschwitz survivors will speak, in what is likely to be the last big commemoration when many are still alive and healthy enough to travel.
“There will be no political speeches at all,” said Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum.
“We want to focus on the last survivors that are among us and on their history, their pain, their trauma and their way to offer us some difficult moral obligations for the present,” he added.
Contemporary politics are nonetheless swirling around the build-up to the event, threatening to overshadow the remembrance ceremony.
Earlier this month, Poland’s deputy foreign minister suggested authorities would be obliged to arrest the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, if he travelled to Poland for the ceremony, given the International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges.
The prime minister, Donald Tusk, rowed back on that threat on Thursday, announcing any Israeli politician, including Netanyahu, could visit the ceremony without fear of arrest, despite the fact Poland is a signatory to the ICC.
“The Polish government treats the safe participation of the leaders of Israel in the commemorations on January 27, 2025, as part of paying tribute to the Jewish nation, millions of whose daughters and sons became victims of the Holocaust carried out by the Third Reich,” read a resolution released by Tusk’s office.
Cywiński described the whole discussion as a “media provocation”, claiming there was no indication Netanyahu had ever planned to visit the ceremony in the first place. He said, however, that a sizeable Israeli delegation was expected at the event.
Israel’s continuing assault on Gaza is only one of many contemporary events that makes it more complicated to regard the ceremony as simply a gathering of world leaders in quiet commemoration of the 1.1 million people who were killed at Auschwitz, the vast majority of whom were Jewish.
In 2005, Vladimir Putin visited the 60th anniversary commemoration, giving a speech in which he said it was “inconceivable to think that people are capable of such barbarity” and paid tribute to the Soviet soldiers who liberated the camp. This time, however, no Russian delegation has been invited.
Cywiński pointed out that both Russians and Ukrainians were among the Red Army troops who liberated the camp, and the war in neighbouring Ukraine was therefore “a war conducted by one liberator against another”. He said there was no question of any Russian delegation attending in the current climate.
“It’s called the day of liberation, and I do not think that a country that does not understand the value of liberty has something to do at a ceremony dedicated to the liberation. It would be cynical to have them there,” he said.
He dismissed any parallels between Russia’s acts in Ukraine and Israel’s assault on Gaza. “I try not to enter into politics with Auschwitz, and I ask politicians to not enter Auschwitz with politics. But the situation is, of course, absolutely different,” he said.
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