Holocaust survivors: 80 years after Auschwitz liberation, it’s ‘the same antisemitism’
While the number of survivors in Israel dropped to 123,715 last year, a rising trend of Holocaust memorials in the Muslim world provide ‘a small amount of light’

OSWIECIM, Poland — Just 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, “we are seeing precisely the same antisemitism that led to the Holocaust,” Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski said, at a commemoration ceremony Monday at the former Nazi death camp.
Turski, along with other survivors, spoke from the podium at the annual event about rising levels of anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence across the globe.
There have always been conflicts between neighbors, but when hate speech escalates out of control, “it always ends in bloodshed,” he said.
Some 3,000 people, including world leaders and dignitaries, attended the International Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony, marking the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps by the Russian Red Army on January 27, 1945.
More than one million Jews from across Europe were murdered at the death camp during the Holocaust, along with 100,000 other victims.
Personal testimonies
Speakers stressed the importance of educating future generations about the Holocaust, particularly at a time when the number of survivors who can tell their stories is dwindling. Only 50 survivors attended this ceremony, compared to 300 a decade ago, and it is likely that very few, if any, of them will be alive for the 90th anniversary in a decade.
“Today, we all have an obligation not only to remember, but also to teach that hatred only begets more hatred, killing more killing,” said Tova Friedman, another survivor who spoke at the event.
Friedman, who was just 6 years old when she was liberated from Auschwitz, said she vividly remembered wondering if she was the only Jewish child left in the world as she heard the cries of parents weeping as her friends were killed.

“I thought that it was normal, that if you’re a Jewish child, you have to die,” she said.
Speaking to The Times of Israel at a reception a day before the event, Friedman said she feared that the memory of the Holocaust would be cheapened once there were no more survivors left to share their message.
“I’m worried that once we’re not here, the Poles are either going to close Auschwitz or make it very commercial,” said Friedman, who frequently lectures about experiences to audiences around the world, and tells her story on a TikTok channel created by her grandson.
Friedman recently reconnected with another child survivor, Michael Bornstein, after seeing her photo on a book of memoirs he published in 2017.
Bornstein’s book, “The Survivors Club,” features a photo of himself as a child in Auschwitz surrounded by other kids in the camp. Friedman, who lives in the same New York neighborhood as Bornstein, contacted him, and the two now collaborate on speaking engagements.

Bornstein told The Times of Israel that after his father died, his mother was able to hide him in her barracks, as he remained under a pile of straw, while the women went out to work every day.
“I remember missing my mother. I remember that I was so hungry that I stole potato skins to survive,” Bornstein said.
Sylvia Smoller told The Times of Israel that her family was able to escape from Warsaw to Vilnius through a string of fortunate events in 1939. “The problem was, there was no way out of Vilnius, because the Russians were advancing from the east and the Germans were advancing from the west,” she said.
Fortunately, Smoller’s father heard about a Japanese diplomat, Chiune Sugihara, who was giving visas to Jews in Lithuania. Her family received one of 2,000 visas he wrote within a two-week period, without the permission of his government, she said.
“This was a diplomat who acted on his conscience and knew that this was the only way for Jews to get out,” she said. “It’s because of him that I’m here today.”

Shifting trends
A number of organizations published reports this week in honor of International Holocaust Memorial Day.
Some 123,715 Holocaust survivors live in Israel, compared to 136,989 at the end of 2023, according to government data released this week.
In Israel, there are 56 different organizations fighting for survivors’ rights, said former Knesset member Colette Avital, who currently serves as the chairperson of the Center Organization of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, which oversees the activities of those organizations. Their efforts have helped secure financial assistance from numerous countries for the survivors, many of whom live in poverty, Avital told The Times of Israel.

“Lately, we’ve been negotiating with the Polish government and with the Romanian government, and we are now getting additional pensions for all of the survivors from those countries,” she said. “Many of them came to Israel with nothing, and some are still living in destitution,” she said.
A report from Tel Aviv University noted a rising trend in Holocaust museums in the Muslim world, including significant sites in Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates. “These museums are a small amount of light, but this small amount is very important,” said Professor Uriya Shavit, head of the university’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry.
The Auschwitz Museum and Memorial organization that runs the concentration camp site said it was visited by more than 1.8 million people in 2024, 10 percent more than in 2023 but still below pre-pandemic levels. Content posted on the museum’s social media channels was viewed over 750 million times over the past year, it noted in a report published earlier this month.