Speeches by politicians banned at 80th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz

Monarchs, presidents and prime ministers are expected among the attendees at a commemoration event for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz this month, but none of them will be allowed near a microphone.

- Shaun Walker

In a first for a "round" anniversary of the liberation, the Auschwitz museum has banned all speeches by politicians at the event on 27 January, 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."

Contemporary politics are nonetheless swirling around the buildup to the event, threatening to overshadow the remembrance ceremony. 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 last week, announcing that any Israeli politician, including Netanyahu, could visit the ceremony without fear of arrest, despite the fact that Poland is a signatory to the ICC.

Cywiński described the whole discussion as a "media provocation", claiming there was no indication that 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.