Live updates: Survivors and lawmakers mark 80th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation
Piles of human hair tell harrowing story
Reporting from Oświęcim, Poland
Out of respect for the victims, we are forbidden from photographing what may be the most harrowing images here: piles of human hair.
Touring the Auschwitz I camp over the weekend, I entered a room. In the corner to the right of the doorway was a glass case with multiple braids of hair sitting on top of fabric. The textile was also made from human hair.
Then I turned and noticed there was a window the length of the long room; it was dark on the other side. I realized what I was looking at: an entire case filled with mounds of human hair, much much of it dark with some blonde strands mixed in.
That’s estimated to be the hair of roughly 40,000 people. It’s a haunting image I won’t forget.
European Commission remembers Holocaust victims
The European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm, marked 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz in a post on X.
“Today, we remember all the victims murdered during the Holocaust,” it posted, adding, “This memory must be passed to future generations.”
The E.U. Parliament plans to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a solemn plenary session in Brussels on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at noon local time (6 a.m. ET).
NBC News’ Jesse Kirsch reports 80 years after Auschwitz’s liberation
NBC News’ Jesse Kirsch reports from Auschwitz 80 years after the largest Nazi extermination camp’s liberation. The team is speaking to survivors —eyewitnesses to genocide — on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Archival photos depict Auschwitz prisoners
Blank expression, barbed wire and an occassional smile for liberators — photographs from Auschwitz-Birkenau 80 years ago offer a glimpse of what greeted Soviet soldiers who entered the camp. First the liberating forces were shocked at the death and depravity they encountered; soon the world would be too.
Auschwitz survivors mark 80 years since Nazi death camp’s liberation
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Reporting from Oświęcim, Poland and New York.
OŚWIĘCIM, Poland — Eva Umlauf was only 2 when Soviet Red Army troops liberated her and her mother from Auschwitz concentration camp — too young to remember the actual day. But the Holocaust is etched onto her skin — A-26,959 tattooed on her left forearm, marking her for life, along with some other Auschwitz survivors.
“You are just a number,” Umlauf, 82, a pediatrician from Munich, told NBC News, explaining how this number will forever make her feel. “But this number is not only on the skin. This is deeper.”
For Umlauf, who traveled for the ceremony along with her sister, son and one of her grandchildren, this was more than a personal journey of memory and reflection. It was a moral responsibility.
“They have to know that it’s true. You know, because it’s so, so unbelievable, unbelievable that nobody can believe this,” she said.
In the eyes of so many around the world, survivors like Umlauf’s very existence is a resounding act of defiance against the world-historic cruelty and vast injustice of Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror. Their stories of survival are also implicit pleas to the world: Never forget humanity’s capacity to commit unthinkable crimes.
Read the full story here.
