The commemorations marking the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz were held on 27 January 2026. The event was attended by the President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki. The Institute of National Remembrance was represented by its Deputy President, Mateusz Szpytma Ph.D.
Eighty-one years ago, units of the Red Army’s 1st Ukrainian Front entered the grounds of the German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, liberating approximately 7,000 prisoners, including around 500 children. On the anniversary of this event, International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed worldwide. The day was established by a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly adopted in 2005 to preserve the memory of the Jews murdered during the Second World War.
In tribute to the victims, a commemorative ceremony was held in the building known as the Central Sauna on the grounds of the former Auschwitz II–Birkenau camp. The ceremony was accompanied by a presentation of recordings entitled “Survivors of Auschwitz on the Meaning of Contemporary Remembrance” and by excerpts from the writings of Załmen Gradowski, a prisoner and member of the Sonderkommando who was murdered in 1944.
“Today, Auschwitz stands as a symbol and proof of bestiality and barbarism - the National Socialist ideology that found its home in a specific state, namely Germany. To this day, the German state has not paid reparations to Poland for the wrongs of the Second World War. This is not how a world of peace is built. Every crime and every war must entail accountability and an apology. Only then can we affirm that our contemporary duty has been fulfilled” - said the President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki.
The culmination of the commemorations was the passing of a symbolic Light of Remembrance, which was subsequently placed by President Karol Nawrocki before the International Monument to the Victims of the Camp.