Eighty years after the Nazi death camp was freed, the testimony of survivors is as crucial as ever<\/p>\n
Memory is fragile. A decade ago, 300 survivors gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate the Nazi death camp\u2019s liberation. On Monday, 50 will assemble<\/a> for the 80th anniversary. The median age of Holocaust survivors was estimated at 86 in a study published last year<\/a>. At 97, Esther Senot is still keeping the promise<\/a> she made to her dying sister Fanny, whose last wish was that she \u201ctell what happened to us … so that we are not forgotten by history.\u201d Almost 1 million of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust<\/a> were killed at the complex in German-occupied Poland, along with smaller numbers of Poles,\u00a0Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, gay men, political prisoners and others. Its name has become synonymous with evil.<\/p>\n The Auschwitz museum\u2019s decision to ban speeches by politicians this year may be in part pragmatic. Holocaust memory has too often been a battleground<\/a> in Poland. The museum\u2019s mission stands above politics, yet cannot be wholly insulated from global affairs. Vladimir Putin has attended in the past, but there will be no Russian presence this time. Earlier this\u00a0month, Poland\u2019s deputy foreign minister appeared\u00a0to suggest that authorities would be obliged to arrest the Israeli prime minister if he travelled to the ceremony, because the international criminal court has\u00a0issued a warrant<\/a> for Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s arrest for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The Polish prime minister, Donald\u00a0Tusk, insisted Mr Netanyahu would be able to attend safely<\/a>, though Israel\u2019s delegation is not expected to include him.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eighty years after the Nazi death camp was freed, the testimony of survivors is as crucial as ever Memory is fragile. A decade ago, 300 survivors gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate the Nazi death camp\u2019s liberation. On Monday, 50 will assemble for the 80th anniversary. The median age of Holocaust survivors was estimated at 86 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}