Miriam Ziegler, 89, shows a photo of a group of children taken just as Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet soldiers. She is circled in the picture sticking out her arm to show the tattoo of her number; A16891. A soldier wanted to know the children’s names, and Ms. Ziegler said she’d only ever been referred by her number at the camp.Anna Liminowicz/The Globe and Mail
As she walked by the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation, Miriam Ziegler thought about the hundreds of thousands of people who perished here and the stroke of luck that saved her life.
Ms. Ziegler was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau with her parents in 1944, at the age of 9. Her father had been a shopkeeper in their hometown of Radom, Poland, and the family enjoyed a prominent position in town. When the invading German army arrived, Ms. Ziegler was hidden away on a farm at first, but soon all of Radom’s Jews were rounded up and loaded onto railcars destined for Auschwitz-Birkenau – and extermination.
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Upon arrival, Ms. Ziegler was separated from her parents. Her mother was later sent to a labour camp in Germany, but her father was killed almost immediately. Ms. Ziegler was sent to the gas chamber, but it malfunctioned that day. She survived many more close calls until Jan. 27, 1945, when Soviet soldiers liberated the camp.
When a Russian soldier asked her and a group of children for their names, Ms. Ziegler stuck out her arm to show the tattoo of her number – A16891.
“I automatically put out my arm because I understood that they wanted our names and in Auschwitz we were only supposed to go by our concentration camp number,” she told The Globe and Mail, the faded tattoo still visible on her arm.
Miriam Ziegler, 89, was sent to Auschwitz with her family in 1944 at the age of nine. She was among 50 Auschwitz survivors who attended a ceremony on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.Anna Liminowicz/The Globe and Mail
Ms. Ziegler along with her mother, grandmother and an aunt, survived the Holocaust and eventually settled in Canada. But every relative on her father’s side was murdered.
Now 89 years old, she was among 50 survivors who returned to Auschwitz-Birkenau to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation. Although she’d been here twice before, this visit has been particularly difficult as the number of survivors dwindles. Only two Canadians came: Ms. Ziegler and Howard Chandler.
“God blessed me for a reason that I should be able to tell people what happened there,” she said. “Every single day whenever they took us out on roll call, they took one or two of us away and they never came back. I was taken a couple of times, but I was lucky, I came back.”
From the left: King Philippe of Belgium, Queen Mathilde of Belgium, British King Charles III and King Frederik X of Denmark watch as religious leaders take the stage during the ceremony for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp on Jan. 27, in Oswiecim, Poland.Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The survivors joined world leaders and several thousand members of the public for Monday’s ceremony. It was held in a giant tent at the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious and efficient of the Nazi death camps. More than one million people died in this sprawling complex during its five years of operation, the vast majority of them Jews.
The dignitaries included King Charles III, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and royalty from across Europe. But they all took a back seat to the survivors.
Standing in front of the gates and an empty cattle car used to transport people to the camp, four survivors spoke about resilience, hope and the message of Auschwitz for today’s world.
Holocaust survivor Tova Friedman addresses the audience during the ceremony for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp on Jan. 27, 2025 in Oswiecim, Poland.Pool/Getty Images
“This is my birthday. January 27,” said Tova Friedman, 86, who was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 5 and spent more than a year at the camp. “Some of my friends don’t even know that I have a regular birthday, because this is what counts.”
Ms. Friedman spoke about watching so many people die that she became convinced her own death was inevitable. “I thought that we all have to die. That it was normal, if you’re a Jewish child you have to die,” she told the gathering.
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“At that time, we were victims in a moral vacuum. But today, however, we have an obligation not only to remember, which is very, very important, but also to warn and to teach that hatred begets more hatred, and killing more killing.”
Leon Weintraub, a 99-year-old survivor, said Auschwitz represented the first industrial-scale mass murder, and he warned about the rise of populist forces that embrace the hatred of others. “Be attentive and be vigilant,” he said. “We the survivors, we understand that the consequence of being different is active persecution, the effects of which we have personally experienced.”
Michelle Fishman, marketing director for the Toronto Holocaust Museum, has been to Auschwitz several times, but on Monday she came alone to mark the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.Anna Liminowicz/The Globe and Mail
Michelle Fishman, marketing director of the Toronto Holocaust Museum, has been to Auschwitz several times but always as part of a group. On Monday, she came alone, and thought about her four grandparents, who survived the Holocaust.
“I sort of have a different perspective. I have all this time to sit with what’s going on in my head,” she said as she walked to the site for the ceremony. “I don’t know how to describe what type of a feeling it is, but it’s something.”
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The commemoration was especially relevant, she added, given the war in Israel and the rise of antisemitism across much of the Western world. “I think that it is all the more important to be here, not only to remember and reflect, but also to learn from our past, to ensure that today and in the future, things like this never happen again,” she said.
Among those waiting in line to attend the service was 38-year-old Jakob Feisthauer. He’s from Germany, he’s not Jewish and he has no family connection to Auschwitz-Birkenau. But he caught a train to Poland for the commemoration because he worries that the memory and message of the camp is fading. “If nobody comes to this place anymore, it might get forgotten.”
Miriam Ziegler was eight when she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. John Freund was 13. Now living in Toronto, the Holocaust survivors recall what conditions were like at the Nazi death camp.
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