The kaddish rose to heaven. Then, a handful of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp survivors, frail and hesitant silhouettes, walked towards the camp entrance, illuminated by a blood-red artificial light. Accompanied, sometimes supported, by young Polish people, they placed a candle in front of a wagon, on the tracks that led the deportees to the gas chambers, most of them as soon as they arrived. Gathered on Monday, January 27, in Oswiecim, Poland, 70 kilometers from Krakow, for the 80th anniversary of the discovery of the camp by the Soviets, some wore a striped scarf or a striped canvas cap, reminiscent of the deportees' pajamas. Dressed in black, one of the survivors paused in front of the wagon to weep softly.
Behind the tent, under which dozens of heads of state and government mingled with the last survivors, barbed wire, watchtowers, and red-brick barracks stretched as far as the eye can see. Auschwitz-Birkenau, the symbol of Nazi Germany's genocide of the Jews, was the largest and deadliest of the extermination camps − over 1.1 million people, including 1 million Jews, were murdered there. It was discovered on January 27, 1945, by the Red Army on its way to Berlin.
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