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Financial Times: Sur­vivor recalls the hor­rors of Aus­chwitz before return­ing for anniversary

January 27, 2025

Dozens of former inmates are going back 80 years after camp’s lib­er­a­tion

Now 91, Doniecka still remem­bers the Ger­man phrase “schneller, schneller, pol­nis­che Sch­weine”, or “faster, faster, Pol­ish pigs”, she said dur­ing an inter­view in her Warsaw flat.

Today she will be among some 50 sur­viv­ors who will return to Aus­chwitz for the 80th anniversary of its lib­er­a­tion by Soviet troops at a spe­cial cere­mony with heads of state, includ­ing Bri­tain’s King Charles III.

They will pay homage to the estim­ated 1.1mn vic­tims who died at the camp, the epi­centre of the Holo­caust built by the Nazis near the town of Oświęcim in occu­pied Poland. Most vic­tims were Jew­ish, but many Pol­ish, Roma and Rus­sian pris­on­ers of war also died there.

Doniecka, who goes to Aus­chwitz every year on the anniversary of its lib­er­a­tion, said that it was import­ant for her to attend these events espe­cially given she was in good health, unlike other sur­viv­ors who were too ill or frail to travel.

“Of course we [the last sur­viv­ors] will not be liv­ing forever, but there is a museum, record­ings and archives, so I can only hope this tra­gic and sad his­tory will never be for­got­ten,” she said.

The cere­mony comes against the back­ground of resur­gent far right parties across Europe, with some politi­cians using Nazi tropes and ges­tures and ques­tion­ing who was respons­ible for the Holo­caust.

“This is the last round anniversary with a notice­able group of sur­viv­ors present, but it is also an anniversary that takes place in our times, per­meated by anti­semit­ism, xeno­pho­bia, grow­ing pop­u­lism and dem­agoguery,” said Piotr Cywiński, dir­ector of the Aus­chwitz-Birkenau state museum.

Her­bert Kickl, who could become the next Aus­trian chan­cel­lor, has described him­self as “Volk­skan­z­ler”, a term used by Adolf Hitler. Far right politi­cians in Italy and Ger­many last year made the Nazi salute in pub­lic. Elon Musk was also accused of mak­ing the ges­ture at the inaug­ur­a­tion parade of US Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump.

A senior mem­ber of Altern­at­ive for Ger­many had to resign from his pos­i­tion as group leader in the European par­lia­ment after claim­ing that many mem­bers of the SS had been “simple farm­ers who didn’t have another choice” in an inter­view with the Fin­an­cial Times.

Doniecka and her mother were detained in August 1944, shortly after the Pol­ish res­ist­ance launched the Warsaw Upris­ing, which the Ger­mans took two months to quash, also des­troy­ing much of Poland’s cap­ital in retali­ation.

Her fam­ily had been hid­ing in a cel­lar, and Doniecka’s father, who was repair­ing guns for Pol­ish fight­ers, was out­side their build­ing at the time and escaped arrest.

In Aus­chwitz, Doniecka was crammed into Block 16A along­side 250 other chil­dren. They were allowed out­doors only for two daily roll calls. She shared her make­shift bunk bed with four oth­ers, one of whom was a fiveyear-old girl who soon died after refus­ing to drink water without see­ing her mother.

In Janu­ary 1945, as the Red Army was advan­cing into Poland, the Nazis trans­ferred some of the pris­on­ers by train, includ­ing Doniecka and her mother, to a forced labour camp near Ber­lin. Many oth­ers who were forced to go on foot per­ished in these so-called “death marches”. By the time Soviet sol­diers lib­er­ated Aus­chwitz on Janu­ary 27 1945, only about 7,000 pris­on­ers remained.

“We knew noth­ing except for the fact that, wherever we got sent, just leav­ing [Aus­chwitz] was a reason to feel some kind of hope again,” Doniecka said.

At the new camp, chil­dren were made to clear rubble from bombed build­ings nearby. Doniecka clasped her hands tightly when recall­ing how much they hurt from hav­ing to pick up bricks and debris in the middle of winter.

“The days were very long and pain­ful, but at least I could then sleep once more next to my mother,” she said.

Doniecka’s last trau­mat­ising memory of the war was watch­ing the cap­tured Ger­man camp com­mander swing from the gal­lows, shortly after Soviet sol­diers released her and other inmates in April 1945.

The grat­it­ude Doniecka feels about the Soviet lib­er­a­tion of Nazi camps does not extend to Rus­sian Pres­id­ent Vladi­mir Putin and his inva­sion of Ukraine, the largest con­flict in Europe since the second world war.

“I’m still grate­ful to the spe­cific sol­diers who lib­er­ated us but I’m liv­ing again in fear when I watch Putin and his war in Ukraine,” she said. “How can you not feel fear when you see what Putin has now been doing?”