Auschwitz: Survivor marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp

Cnn
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“It doesn’t matter to your heart, for your mind, for something,” said Holocaust survivor Jona Salmon, 94, about his return to Nazi Germany’s concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“But it’s necessary,” she said. “It is necessary for the world to know that.”

On Monday, the Holocaust Memorial Day marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp complex, where salmon spent more than a year when she was only about 12 years old.

She and her twin sister, Miriam, experienced horrors in SS doctor Joseph Mengele’s inhuman medical experiments. Salmon was originally set up to be murdered in gas chambers, but her big sister saved her by shouting that the twins should not be separated.

Salmon who was only a child when Hitler invaded her homeland Poland told CNN that the suffering that followed is “absolutely impossible to understand.”

“As time goes on, things are forgotten,” salmon said, noticing that few are back from her generation to say. “The world has not learned the lesson of what was happening, of what was done.”

About 1.1 million people were murdered in the concentration camp from 1940 to 1945, many of them Jews, but also other victims in the third rich including Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

Michael Bornstein, who survived for seven months in Auschwitz as a child, said “nothing will be easy to return” to the place.

World leaders are also gathered in Poland to mark the camp’s liberation, including Britain’s King Charles, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron. But no one will speak at the event, which instead aims to focus on the voices of the survivors.

All Auschwitz ‘back Survivors are invited to the commemoration and can bring one person to support.

“We are fully aware of how physically demanding and emotionally stressful to attend the memorial event at the site of the former camp may be for them,” Auschwitz Memorial and Museum said in a statement.

One of the Symbols of the 80s^th Anniversary is a freight train car that is placed directly in front of the main gate. The train car is dedicated to the remembrance of the approximately 420,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz.

The United Nations declared on January 27 as the International Memorial Day of the Holocaust in 2005. Anyone observed annually marks the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 and commemorates the six million Jews who lost their lives during Nazis.

Germany Scholz said in a Monday statement: “Sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, friends, neighbors, grandparents: More than a million individuals with dreams and hopes were murdered in Auschwitz by Germans. We mourn their death. And express our deepest compassion. We will never forget them.

The museum says the event in Auschwitz allows for common commemoration and global reflection.

It happens at one point of increasing anti -Semitism in Europe, driven by the conflict in the Middle East, where Israel began a war against Gaza in response to terrorist attacks carried out by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023.

See at home with dad who organized the slaughter in Auschwitz

See at home with dad who organized the slaughter in Auschwitz

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There has been an increase in anti -Semitic events in Europe since October 2023, when some Jewish social organizations reported an increase of more than 400 %, according to a study by the European Union’s fundamental rights (FR) Agency (FR).

Of those surveyed, 76 % say they hide their Jewish identity at least occasionally, and 34 % avoid Jewish events or places because they feel unsafe.

“Europe is witnessing a wave of anti-Semitism, partly driven by the conflict in the Middle East. This is severely limiting the Jewish people’s ability to live in safety and with dignity,” said from director Sirpa Rautio.

Events in the Middle East have also caused an increase in Islamophobic events throughout Europe, including arson, verbal and physical abuse and targeting against mosques.

CNNS Melissa Bell, Pierre Bairin, Mark Esplin and Chris Stern contributed to this report.