Holocaust survivors have been speaking of the horrors they witnessed, during a ceremony to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Follow events in Poland and the UK here.
Tuesday 28 January 2025 00:45, UK
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
We’ll be stopping our coverage of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and Holocaust Memorial Day.
The annual event remembered the six million Jewish people murdered during the Holocaust, as well as the millions killed under Nazi persecution and those who died in subsequent genocides.
Before a ceremony staged at Auschwitz-Birkenau, King Charles visited Krakow’s Jewish Community Centre.
A dwindling number of elderly men and women who lived through the terrible conditions at the concentration camp were the focus of the ceremony, with some sharing their experiences and thoughts on hatred and prejudice in the world.
They were watched by world leaders and heads of state, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The day also saw the Prince and Princess of Wales attend a Holocaust commemoration ceremony at the Guildhall in London.
You can watch moments from the ceremony here…
Rachel Riley has been speaking to Sky’s Sarah-Jane Mee tonight about the rise in Holocaust denial.
“I was a child of the 80s so Holocaust education was around,” she said.
“There was sympathy every time there was a Holocaust memorial day. And it was in some ways cathartic.
“But unfortunately in recent times Holocaust denial is on the rise.”
She said it was important not just to remember all those who had lost their lives but also to “protect against future generations”.
Antisemitism spiked the day after the 7 October attacks, Rob Rinder has told Sky’s Sarah-Jane Mee tonight.
He said the children of good family friends he knew went to Jewish schools and do so “under fear and threat every single day”.
He said: “A parent taking a kid to a local school does so knowing courageously there’s a chance that school may be attacked.
“That’s the situation in 2025.”
He also noted it was it was important “not to speak up that hate but speak up the courage of the British public”.
Holocaust survivors shared their painful memories today during a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
King Charles described his historic visit to Auschwitz as “something that I will never forget” and said remembering the “horrors” of the concentration camp was a “sacred duty”.
Elsewhere, the Prince and Princess of Wales met with Holocaust survivors in London at an official commemoration marking Holocaust Memorial Day.
Here are just a few of the images from the day…
By Siobhan Robbins, Europe correspondent
Some of Auschwitz’s last survivors today returned to hell.
Those who lived to see freedom – remembering those who did not.
A group of around 50 visited the Nazis largest extermination camp for a remarkable day of remembrance.
Some were wearing the striped caps or badges given to prisoners in the camp, but 80 years after Auschwitz was liberated, these are no longer symbols of detention, but of defiance, survival.
Some came with family, others carried ghosts of the past as they reached out to touch the stones of the “death wall”, a place where so much innocent blood was spilt.
More than a million people were killed at Auschwitz.
The majority of people brought to the camp were murdered.
So, survivors were clear today was not only a chance to speak their own truths, but an opportunity to give voice to those no longer here.
And where better to do that than at a ceremony at the great gates of Birkenau death camp.
A place where the apparatus of extermination still stands.
Here, witnesses of one of the greatest crimes in history told of the horrors they saw and warned amid rising antisemitism that the crimes of the past must not be replayed in the present.
But all of the final survivors are elderly and with every big anniversary their number dwindles.
Returning to this wretched place is a heavy burden and as the living lit candles for the dead, the emotion of the day became too much for one lady.
Overwhelmed by grief, she collapsed into another’s arms.
The hurt inflicted here cannot be healed and many survivors know they may never make this journey again.
As we reported earlier, the Princess of Wales hugged and held hands with Holocaust survivors as she attended official commemorations to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
Kate joined her husband the Prince of Wales for the event at Guildhall in central London on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
At the end of the ceremony William and Kate each appeared on stage to gather a flame and light their own candles.
Ireland’s Tanaiste has defended the country’s president for his decision to raise the conflict in Gaza during his speech at a Holocaust memorial event.
During a speech in Dublin, Michael Higgins spoke about the 7 October Hamas attack and subsequent conflictin Gaza, prompting criticism from some members of the Jewish community.
Deputy prime minister Simon Harris said that while people had the right to protest, the president had been “very clear” in calling out the horrors of the Holocaust.
“I understand there were a small number of people who protested, and of course people have a right to protest, but I think the president was very clear… in calling out the horrors of the Holocaust,” he said.
By Anna Botting, in Auschwitz-Birkenau
It is widely recognised this could be the last Auschwitz commemoration with the numbers of survivors we saw here today – some 50 who made the journey and who spoke again so emotionally about their stories of survival.
Those who live now were young then.
Wrenched from the arms of parents – because those who were older, or very young, who were sick, or weak – would live mere hours here.
Taken to gas chambers, their bodies burnt on site, their worldly possessions taken.
Those who survived would not see their relatives again.
The survivors were those who lied about their age during “selection”.
Who jumped from a train heading to Auschwitz, during a disturbance.
Whose mother bought forged papers showing they were Christians and not Jews.
Who were born the day after the pesticide crystals used in the gas chambers ran out.
Those were the stories we heard on Sky News today.
Each story extraordinary. Because to survive was extraordinary.
Here at Birkenau, every minute, every hour, every week was a fight for survival.
A fight to go unnoticed, a fight to stay upright while stood for hours, a fight to work – at a time when slave labour was a mechanism to kill, a fight to stay alive while starving.
A fight, too, to withstand the death marches – as the Nazis tried to hide the evidence of the horrors here.
Those left at Auschwitz-Birkenau had faced one final selection – too weak to walk, they stayed, 10 days without food as the SS Guards pulled out.
The remnants of a murderous campaign of extermination. Remembered today.
The survivors, with their extraordinary stories, again sharing their life here. The horror, the pain. And ultimately for the few, the escape.
Buildings across the UK have been lit purple to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
As we have been reporting today, the date also marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz on 27 January 1945.
Comedian and actor David Baddiel has been speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge this evening about his great uncle who was kept in the Warsaw Ghetto – the largest of the Nazi ghettos during the Second World War.
He said his grandmother spent a lot of her life trying to find out what had happened to her younger brother, Arno.
Arno was in the Warsaw Ghetto, Baddiel said, and he had written postcards to Baddiel’s grandmother saying “pray for me”.
The actor said he “thought about Arno a lot”.
“He looked very like a member of my family and it is a member of my family I never met and I don’t know what happened to him,” he said.
Asked if he felt there had been a rise in antisemitism due to war in Gaza, he added: “I think antisemitism exists all the time.
“Unquestionably events in the Middle East are continually conflated with ideas about Jews elsewhere, which is wrong.
“The idea that Jews around the world are considered complicit with things that happen miles and miles away is something I think is fairly unique to Jews.”
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free