World marks 80 years after liberation of Auschwitz

Andrzej Dudapresident

We are the guardians of memory,

said Duda, after laying a wreath at the wall where thousands of prisoners were executed at Auschwitz 1, the concentration camp 3km (1.85 miles) from Birkenau

Memory hurts, memory helps, memory guides... without memory you have no history, no experience, no point of reference,

he said, as survivors listened on, many of them wearing blue-and-white striped scarves to symbolise prisoners' clothing

We've seen the consequences of the camps and the beatings and hate,

she told the BBC

That's very daunting and I don't believe we're in a post-Holocaust world,

he added

This year, we will focus on the survivors and their message,

Auschwitz Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

How did the world allow Auschwitz?"

asked 95-year-old Marta Neuwirth from Chile's capital Santiago

Elon Muskbillionaire

I think there’s frankly too much of a focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that. Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents or even let alone their parents, the great-grandparents, maybe even,

Musk said

Tova Friedmanauthor and academic

We were victims in a moral vacuum,

she told delegates

We keep alive the memory of the breach of civilization committed by Germans in the Holocaust and convey it to every generation in our country again and again. Our responsibility never ends,

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said ahead of the anniversary

There were small children there who were brought with their mothers. After leaving the ‘disinfection’ room, they were separated, torn off them. The mothers almost ripped the hands of these children off because they did not want to let them go. Besides, some of the children could not recognize their mothers, because not only were the clothes different but also the heads. A shaved head and a head with hair are two completely different heads,

Iwanska said

As soon as I got off the wagon, I was immediately hit by the smell, the one I knew from Treblinka [concentration camp] — the smell of burning bodies,

she told Reuters

We see in the modern world today a great increase in antisemitism, and it was antisemitism that led to the Holocaust,

said Marian Turski, 98, who was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 and survived the westward 'death march' to Buchenwald in 1945

The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task, and in so doing we inform our present and shape our future,

King Charles said during a visit to the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow

Our Jewish-Christian values have been overshadowed worldwide by prejudice, fear, suspicion and extremism,

she said

I ask you to multiply your efforts to counteract the views whose effects we are commemorating today,

he said

I believe our thoughts go towards the huge majority, those millions of victims who will never tell us what they experienced, what they felt, just because they were consumed by that mass destruction, the Shoah (Holocaust).

Turski welcomed the survivors in the audience and commemorated all those who could not be there

Tova Friedmanauthor and academic

I always thought that January 27 was my birthday. Even many of my friends don't know that it's not actually my birthday,

said Friedman at the beginning of her speech

That which I have absorbed with my mother's milk, into my soul, I will carry with me forever,

said Wernik through a Polish interpreter

Never again war, never again fascism. You must remain vigilant... so that nothing like this ever happens again. That's what I wrote. [I was] born in hell, in Auschwitz-Birkenau."

In the same vein, Stefania Wernik told the students the day before

What they tried to do in the Holocaust was to dehumanize people, to turn them into numbers,

he said