International Holocaust Remembrance Day arrived in Europe and with it a solemn marking of one of the continent’s most defining tragedies.
In Poland, King Charles commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp with a speech, calling it “both a somber (sic.) and indeed a sacred moment.”
“It is a moment when we recall the six million Jews, old and young, who were systematicallymurdered, together with Sinti, Roma, disabled people, members of the L.G.B.T. community, political prisoners, and so many others upon whom the Nazis inflicted their violence and hatred,” Charles said.
“It is a moment when we recall the depths to which humanity can sink when evil is allowed to flourish, ignored for too long by the world,” he continued, lamenting the diminishing number of Holocaust survivors who remain alive to detail the horrors firsthand.
“The act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task and in so doing, we inform our present and shape our future,” he said.
The speech was delivered at the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow, Poland, which was established by the king himself in 2008. Kraków, once home to an outsized percentage of the Jewish population, became a center of oppression after Nazi Germany invaded the country.
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In the Krakow Ghetto, many Jews suffered ever-worsening conditions before authorities established a policy of extermination through concentration camps across Europe, with one − Krakow-Plaszow − in the city itself.
“Here in Krakow, from the ashes of the Holocaust, the Jewish community has been reborn,” the king said. “In a post-Holocaust world, projects such as this Centre are how we recover our faith in humanity. They also show us there is much work still to be done if we are not just to remember the past, but to use it to inspire us to build a kinder and more compassionate world for future generations; a world of which we can be truly proud.”
The king also cautioned against a “dangerous” recent resurgence in antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that studies bias, warned in January of 2024 that antisemitic incidents had “skyrocketed” in the U.S. after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
In the three months following the attack, the ADL tracked a 361% increase in antisemitic incidents compared to the same period the year prior. Charles’ speech was also delivered against the backdrop of an uptick in far-right, nationalist politics in Europe. Across the European Union, both Germany and Austria have seen a re-popularization of anti-immigrant, right-wing political movements.
Notably, in the U.S., Jews mark Holocaust Remembrance on a different day. “Yom Hashoa,” the Hebrew phrase for Holocaust Remembrance, will fall on April 24, 2025.
