Halina Birenbaum, a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor who endured Auschwitz from 1943 until its liberation by the Red Army in 1945, delivered a poignant message on Saturday at Auschwitz-Birkenau’s memorial site. Birenbaum expressed that wars, as well as anti-Jewish demonstrations, “make the Holocaust endure.”
Speaking under a tent set up in the former women’s barracks where she lived during her captivity, Birenbaum participated in a ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the arrival of Soviet troops.
“I painfully feel the sufferings and tragedies of today’s wars, of today’s peoples,” she said, referencing “the barbaric and prolonged Russian attack on Ukraine (…), the barbaric terrorist attacks of Hamas, and war everywhere.”
Birenbaum also lamented the resurgence of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel actions worldwide. “For me, this prolongs the Holocaust,” she stated during the ceremony, attended by around twenty other survivors.
Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, acknowledged it as “one of the most challenging anniversaries” in the history of the liberation of the camp. He referred to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, noting that “now, the liberators attack others, violate, and kill,” while “in Israel (…) peace is not seen on any horizon.”
The incursion of Islamist militants from Gaza on October 7 led to the deaths of 1,140 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, according to AFP’s tally based on Israeli official data. Israel launched a retaliatory offensive aiming to “annihilate” Hamas in Gaza, resulting in over 26,200 deaths, predominantly women, children, and teenagers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry’s data.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, constructed in Poland during the Nazi Germany occupation, witnessed the extermination of one million of the six million European Jews murdered between 1940 and 1945 by the Hitler regime. The camp also saw the deaths of 80,000 non-Jewish Poles, 25,000 Roma, and 25,000 Soviet soldiers captured during the war before its liberation on January 27, 1945.