January 27, 2021 starting at 10am EST

Commemoration Broadcast at

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum YouTube

On 27 January 2021 we will commemorate the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the commemoration will exceptionally not be held at the Memorial, but in the virtual space. The main theme of the anniversary will be the fate of children in Auschwitz.

‘Over 200,000 children were murdered in Auschwitz. Completely innocent, good, curious about life, loving their closest ones, trusting children. The adult world – after all, so often unjust and cruel – has never demonstrated so much of its heartlessness, its evil,” said Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

‘This cannot be justified by any ideology, reckoning or politics. This year we want to dedicate the anniversary of liberation to the youngest victims of the camp,’ he added.

It is estimated, basing on the approximate data, that at least 232,000 children and young people were deported to Auschwitz, of whom 216,000 were Jews, 11,000 Roma, about 3,000 Poles, more than 1,000 Belarusians, and several hundred Russians, Ukrainians, and others. A total of about 23,000 children and young people were registered in the camp. Slightly more than 700 were liberated on the territory of Auschwitz in January 1945. Until the liberation of the camp by soldiers of the Red Army, German Nazis murdered approx. 1.1 million people in Auschwitz, mostly Jews, but also Poles, the Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and people of other nationalities.

Auschwitz is for the world today, a symbol of the Holocaust and atrocities of World War II. In 2005, the United Nations adopted 27 January as the International Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day.

Source: Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum