News

78th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, 27 January 2023 - announcement

On 27 January 2023 we will commemorate the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. The event will be held under the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda. The entire event will be streamed live online.

The main theme of the 78th anniversary will be the process of planning, creating and expanding the system of dehumanisation and genocide at Auschwitz, which was particularly strongly defined by the words of survivor Marian Turski "Auschwitz did not fall from the sky".

While the function of Auschwitz as an extermination center was taking shape in 1942, in 1943 the scale of operation became industrial. In the spring of that year, the Germans completed the construction of four installations at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, which included gas chambers and modern facilities for cremating corpses.

'Today visitors to the Memorial can see the ruins of buildings that become a symbol of the extermination of Jews, but also of other crimes committed at Auschwitz against Poles, Roma, Russians and people of other nationalities. However, architectural and construction plans survived, which clearly shows what a human being, even a well-educated one, is capable of doing on behalf of an ideology. All these remains are an eloquent warning to mankind, how eloquent today in light of Russia's war crimes in Ukraine,' said Museum Director Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywinski.

All Auschwitz Survivors are invited to the commemoration event, each with one accompanying person.

Details of the commemoration event and organizational information can be found at 78.auschwitz.org. We will announce details of the program at a later date.

Until the liberation of some 7 thousand prisoners remaining at the site of the camp by soldiers of the Red Army, the German Nazis murdered approx. 1.1 million people in Auschwitz, mostly Jews, but also Poles, the Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and people of other nationalities.

We talk about the history of Auschwitz in our online lessons and our podcast "On Auschwitz."

For the world today, Auschwitz is a symbol of the Holocaust and the atrocities of World War II. In 2005 the United Nations declared 27 January as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.