Survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau are gathering Friday to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German death camp in the final months of World War II, amid the horror of war again shattering peace in Europe.
Bogdan Bartnikowski, a Pole who was 12 years old when he was transported to Auschwitz, said the first images he saw on television last February of refugees fleeing after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered traumatic memories.
“It was literally a blow to the head for me because I suddenly saw, after almost 80 years, what I had seen in a freight car when I was being transported to Auschwitz. A little girl was sitting next to me, hugging a doll to her chest," Bartnikowski, now 90, said. One of the others, Stefania Wernik, who was born at Auschwitz in November 1944, less than three months before its liberation, spoke of Auschwitz being a “hell on earth.”
And yet her mother had abundant milk, and they both survived. After the war, her mother returned home and reunited with her husband, and “the whole village came to look at us and said it's a miracle.”“No more fascism, which brings death, genocide, crimes, slaughter and loss of human dignity,” she said.
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Auschwitz anniversary marked as peace again shattered by warOSWIECIM, Poland (AP) — Survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau are gathering Friday to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German death camp in the final months of World War II, amid the horror of war again shattering peace in Europe.
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Russia not invited to Auschwitz liberation ceremonyFriday will mark the 78th anniversary of the haunting winter afternoon when Red Army troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than a million people had been murdered. Russian officials will not be attending.
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Russia not invited to Auschwitz liberation ceremonyFriday will mark the 78th anniversary of the haunting winter afternoon when Red Army troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than a million people (the vast majority of them Jews, but also political prisoners and Roma people) had been murdered.
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Auschwitz anniversary marked as Europe's peace again shattered by warSurvivors of Auschwitz are gathering to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, amid the horror of war again shattering peace in Europe.
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