No politicians, only survivors, to speak at 80th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation [View all]

Politicians and world leaders will not be invited to make speeches to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp later this month, according to the director of the site, who has chosen to highlight Holocaust survivors at the main commemoration event.

“There will be no political speeches at all,” Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published Monday.

“We want to focus on the last survivors that are among us and on their history, their pain, their trauma, and their way to offer us some difficult moral obligations for the present,” he said.

It will be the first time world leaders have not been permitted to speak at a significant anniversary of the liberation of the camp.

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