Auschwitz survivors fear rising hate could bring on another Holocaust 80 years later

KRAKOW — As she prepared to return to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Miriam Ziegler vividly recalled how it felt to be a little girl orphaned by the Nazis and left alone in a world ruined by war.

Eighty years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp, the 89-year-old Ziegler said the rising tide of “hatred” around the world makes her fear that history might be ready to repeat itself.

“I’m afraid that it can happen again. For my children, for my grandchildren,” she said. “I was lucky enough to survive.”

Ziegler and fellow Canadian Auschwitz survivor Howard Chandler, 96, met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Krakow, Poland on Monday. They and Trudeau were in Poland for events marking the anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation.

Ziegler was placed in an orphanage after the camp was liberated and eventually moved to Canada.

She said that while it’s hard to return to those dark memories, she believes God spared her life so that she could tell the world what she witnessed.

“I have to keep telling the story. It shouldn’t happen again. It shouldn’t happen, doesn’t matter — any nation,” she said.

More than six million Jews — including Ziegler’s family — were killed in the Holocaust as the Nazi regime sought to wipe out Europe’s Jewish population. Historians estimate more than one million people, mostly Jews, were killed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp during the Second World War.

Chandler recalled the day he watched German soldiers come to his village and force Jewish men to shave off their beards in public.

“The Catholic people, our neighbours, were standing on the sidewalk laughing. There was one family that lived across from us … she says, ‘Don’t be so joyful with what they’re doing to the Jews. They’re going to start with the Jews, they’re going to finish with us,’” Chandler said. “Very smart woman.”

“If you don’t nip it in the bud when this happens, it is going to spread as we see now,” he added. (Antisemitism) is a curse.”

Chandler, his brother and their father were sent to a slave labour camp in Wierzbnik, Poland. They lived and worked there for two years before being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Chandler survived death marches to Germany before being reunited with his brother in the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimer, Germany.

Both were freed in Terezin, Czech Republic after the war concluded.

Like Ziegler, Chandler said he believes he has a duty to tell the world what he experienced — and to deliver a warning.

“Auschwitz didn’t come down from the sky. It started with words, and it ends with a chimney, being burned and going out in smoke,” he said.

“Nobody, except the Holocaust survivors who experienced this, can feel what is coming. It’s not only our duty, but the duty of humanity to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody.”

Trudeau said he felt “blessed” to meet with Ziegler and Chandler and hear their stories.

“It’s a time in the world where we need to be reminded what ‘never again’ means, more than ever before,” Trudeau said at the start of their meeting.

Trudeau and other world leaders were scheduled to attend an anniversary ceremony Monday at Auschwitz, where more survivors are set to speak.

Before the ceremony, Trudeau visited House 88, the former home of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolph Höss.

The windows of the house — including one in the room where Höss’ children slept — look onto the grounds of the death camp.

The house was purchased recently by the Counter Extremism Project and turned into the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism, and Radicalization.

Following the tour, Trudeau met with Polish President Andrzej Duda. Both remarked on how this is likely to be the final major gathering of Auschwitz survivors.

This may be Trudeau’s last major international trip as prime minister. The next Liberal party leader is being chosen on March 9.

Trudeau is scheduled to meet with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Tuesday before returning to Canada.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2025.

David Baxter, The Canadian Press