Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, survivors call for courage amid the rise of hatred and antisemitism 'We must avoid the mistakes of the 1930s'

On a day of startling blue skies, Auschwitz survivors stood before princes and presidents on Monday to remind the world, perhaps for the final time, of the horrors they suffered there during one of the darkest moments of human history.

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Beneath a marquee erected in front of the gate to the former Nazi death camp, four former inmates - the youngest 86, the oldest 99 - warned world leaders on the 80th anniversary of its liberation against the danger of rising antisemitism.

Tova Friedman, 86, was five when she came to the camp, but said her memories were still "so vivid".

"We are here to proclaim... that we can never, ever allow history to repeat itself," she said. But eight decades after the camp's liberation, she said, "our Jewish-Christian values are once more overshadowed by prejudice, fear, suspicion, extremism".

With nationalist and far-right parties gaining support across Europe and disinformation increasingly distorting the history of the Holocaust, this year's anniversary carried special weight.

In front of one of the freight wagons that carried people here like cattle, Marian Turski, 98, condemned a "huge rise" in antisemitism and called for "courage" against Holocaust minimisers and conspiracy theorists.

Leon Weintraub, 99, who managed to sneak out of Auschwitz by joining a group of prisoners working outside the camp, urged vigilance against a resurgent European far right with its ideology of "hostility and resentment" against all who are different.

"Let's take seriously what the enemies of democracy preach," he said.

"We, survivors, understand that the consequence of 'being different' is active persecution, which we have personally experienced. We must avoid the mistakes of the 1930s." Janina Iwańska, 94, a Polish Catholic and inmate number 85595 at Auschwitz, said nobody knew exactly how many people died there. "It was a killing factory," she said.

The World Jewish Congress president, Ronald Lauder, said the horrors of Auschwitz and Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel were both inspired by "the age-old hatred of Jews".