For Auschwitz survivors, on 7 October there is a terrible intermingling of memories past and present involving the threats and murderous violence to which Jewish people have been, and still are, exposed.

The survivors are commemorating the heroic courage of the prisoners in the Sonderkommando at gas chamber and crematorium no.4 in Auschwitz-Birkenau. On 7 October 1944 the Sonderkommando prisoners dared to defy the SS using smuggled weapons in their uprising 80 years ago. The SS killed every single one of them in the course of the revolt. But the facts about their uprising and their courage spread like wildfire among the camp prisoners and gave them hope in those last murderous weeks of Auschwitz's existence.

At the commemoration in Berlin on 7 October, Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, stressed:

“After their liberation, many survivors of Auschwitz sought a new beginning in Israel. Never again did they want to live in a world where anti-Semitic hatred and violence could re-emerge. They wanted to live in peace with their neighbours. Hadn’t they themselves experienced unbounded hatred and lost their families in the gas chambers of Auschwitz?

Today, the horrific images of their Auschwitz memories are being revived by the suffocating, horrific images of the hatred and murder, the killing of Jewish men, women and children on 7 October 2023, the day on which the terrorists of Hamas once again made it very clear what they are about:

The destruction of the State of Israel and the annihilation of Jewish people in Israel and around the world.”

And in Warsaw, Marian Turski (98), Auschwitz survivor and President of the International Auschwitz Committee, stated:

“It is with sadness, love and solidarity that we, as Holocaust survivors, remember our friends and companions in Israel and their families on this 7 October. We remember the hostages who are still in the hands of Hamas. As survivors of the Holocaust, we were confronted for decades with the fact that repeated attempts were made to deny or suppress information about the Holocaust. There were attempts to obliterate the murders of our parents and siblings as if they had never taken place. That is why we are particularly outraged today that similar attempts are now being made to erase the Hamas pogroms of 7 October 2023 from public consciousness, concealing and even denying that they were the cause of current developments in Israel and Gaza. Hamas still has the power to stop the suffering and pain of all those involved in this conflict by immediately releasing all of the hostages.”