60th anniversary of liberating KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, 27th January 2005
Address at the state ceremony dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz Birkenau

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski

For a former Polish inmate of Auschwitz, it is an unimaginable and overwhelming emotion to be able to speak in this cemetery without graves, the largest one in the history of Europe. It is an unimaginable emotion since back in September 1940 when I first stood on the assembly ground in Auschwitz I, Schutzhaeftling No. 4427, in the crowd of five and a half thousand of other Poles: students, Polish scouts, teachers, lawyers, doctors, priests, Polish Army officers, activists from various political parties and trade unions, I never imagined I would outlive Hitler or survive World War II. Likewise, I did not expect that Auschwitz would become a scene of a unique plan of biological extermination of European Jews, regardless of their sex and age, known as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Monowitz. In the first fifteen months of existence of this awful place, we, the Polish inmates, were all alone. The free world was not interested in our suffering nor in our death, this in spite of enormous efforts of the secret resistance organization in the camp to transmit the information to the outside world. In the late summer of 1941, several thousand of POW's from the Soviet Army were brought here. It was them and the Polish political prisoners suffering from disease who were made subjects for testing of a poisonous Zyklon B gas. Nobody among the inmates could have imagined back then that this was only a criminal experiment, a criminal preparation for genocide to be perpetrated by industrial methods. And yet this was to become reality in the memorable years of 1942-1943-1944. The construction of gas chambers and crematories, their effective operation - these are merely technical facets of this devilish undertaking. In Poland, a home country of David Ben Gurion, Shimon Peres, and also Isaac Bashevic Singer, Arthur Rubinstein and Menachem Begin, by a decree from Berlin, a centre for extermination of the detested Jews was built. As much as the Poles or the Russians were Untermenschen for the Germans in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Jews from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, from the countries of former Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, were not treated as Untermenschen but as vermin. The Polish resistance movement kept informing and alerting the free world to the situation. In the last quarter of 1942, thanks to the Polish emissary Jan Karski and his mission, and also by other means, the Governments of the United Kingdom and of the United States

60th anniversary of liberating KL Auschwitz-Birkenau 27th January 2005 _ f KL AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU LIBERATION COMMEMORATIONS 2 _

were well informed about what was going on in Auschwitz-Birkenau. None of the countries of the world would react in a manner commensurate with the gravity of the problem to the note of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Polish Government in London, dated December 10, 1942, calling upon the Allied Governments "not only to condemn the atrocities committed by the Germans and to punish the criminals but also to find means which will effectively prevent the Germans from perpetrating mass murder by these methods." Effective means were not found and truly speaking were not sought. And yet, back then more than a half of future victims had been still alive. The only effect produced by the Polish initiative was a short declaration of the twelve Allied States about the responsibility for the extermination of the Jews, made on December 17, 1942, in London, Moscow and Washington in parallel. In this declaration, where Auschwitz-Birkenau is not mentioned by the name, the Governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR, Yugoslavia, and the French National Committee signal that they know about the terrible plight of the Jews "in Poland which the Nazis made their principal place of torture" and they announce that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution.

The last former inmates of Auschwitz-Birkenau present here today will probably not be able to commemorate their fellow victims in next decades. Nevertheless, they have the right to believe that their sufferings and the death of their nearest was not in vain and paved the way for a better future of all people in Europe, in the world even, regardless of their ethnic origin or religious belief. We want to believe that the memory of this unimaginable plight of the inmates and victims of this place where we are now will oblige new generations to live in respect for the dignity of each man and to actively counteract the phenomena of hatred and contempt of people felt by other people, and in particular all shades of xenophobia and anti-Semitism, even if the latter is hypocritically called anti-Zionism.
In my life, I attended hundreds of regional and international ceremonies, but I do not think there will be another similar to this one. The question to be asked of ourselves and of the world is: how much of the truth about those horrible experiences of totalitarianism we managed to pass down to younger generations. Much of it, as I think, but not enough. Seeking to fulfill the last will of the former inmates who are passing away, here and now we must take a decision on the launch of the Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.

In every normal man, the sight of graves prompts a reflection. But there are no graves here. So on the scene of this unspeakable crime, a reflection must transform itself into this unique sense of responsibility, into a lasting memory about what happened. Let me finish by quoting the words from the Book of Job, the Book equally important to the Jews and to the Christians: "Cover not my blood, O earth, afford my cry no place to rest".