KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Friday, Jan. 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
It's been 78 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of Nazi Germany's concentration camps. The United Nations General Assembly designated the day of liberation to remember the six million Jewish lives lost in the Holocaust and the millions more who died to Nazism.
The theme for 2023 was "Home and Belonging," which reflects on what these meant to those who were persecuted during the Holocaust and its aftermath.
On Friday, the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture invited people to reflect on the 20th anniversary of the Tennessee Holocaust Commission's "Living On" oral history and portrait project.
You can watch that Emmy-winning documentary and learn more about Tennessee's survivors, liberators and witnesses at this link.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum hosted 18 survivors at a commemoration event at Auschwitz. Two survivors spoke at the event: Dr. Eva Umlauf and Zdzisława Włodarczyk. President Andrzej Duda of Poland also attended the event.
Włodarczyk was born in Aug. 1933. The museum said her family was arrested by the Germans and deported to Auschwitz in Aug. 1944 before she was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945.
"Nights were the worst. The children were crying that they were cold and hungry. With time, they became silent, because they knew that no one and nothing would help them. Mothers would not come," she said.
Umlauf was born in the Novaky labor camp in 1942 before she and her family were deported to Auschwitz in Nov. 1944.
"All other members of the family were not that lucky – apart from me and my Mum nobody survived; my sister, Nora was born shortly after the liberation, in April 1945. All my mother’s siblings were murdered," she said. "Auschwitz cannot be repeated. Yet, proclaiming only 'Never again' is not enough! The solidified division between those who push atrocities away from them, and those who confront with atrocities, must be worked through together."