Auschwitz Museum spokesperson Bartosz Bartyzel said survivors were the most important participants in the commemoration and that their message was relevant far beyond the site itself.
The museum announced on Tuesday that the main ceremony will begin at 16:00 local time in the so-called sauna building at the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.
The building once served as the largest camp bathhouse, where tens of thousands of people, mainly Jews and Poles, underwent initial admission procedures.
SS guards also carried out additional selections there.
Bartyzel said the ceremony would open with a recorded address by survivors on the meaning of memory today, followed by a reading of testimony by Załmen Gradowski, a Polish Jew imprisoned in Auschwitz II-Birkenau and a member of the Sonderkommando.
After a musical interlude, survivors of Auschwitz will speak.
The museum has not yet said how many will address the gathering.
"We will meet the survivors – the most important guests of that day – and listen to their words and to the story of the life tragedy they experienced here in Auschwitz," Bartyzel said.
"We will also listen to their warnings, because the lesson of Auschwitz is not only a lesson of history, but also a lesson of memory and sensitivity, which the contemporary world so greatly needs," the spokesperson added.
No speeches by politicians planned
In line with earlier announcements by the museum’s director, Piotr Cywiński, no speeches by politicians, heads of state or diplomats are planned, in order to focus fully on the voices of victims and survivors.
The decision was unanimously supported by the International Auschwitz Council.
Additional remarks will be limited to representatives of donors to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation and to guardians of the memorial site.
The ceremony will conclude with prayers by clergy of different religions and denominations, and the laying of candles at the monument to the camp’s victims between the ruins of the two largest crematoria.
Earlier in the day, former prisoners and the museum’s management will pay tribute to the dead at the Death Wall in the yard of block 11 at Auschwitz I, where thousands of people, mainly Poles, were executed.
Auschwitz is a global symbol of the Holocaust and the atrocities of the Second World War.
"By the time the camp was liberated by soldiers of the Red Army, the German Nazis had murdered approximately 1.1 million people in Auschwitz, primarily Jews, as well as Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and people of other nationalities," the museum says.
On 27 January 1945, about 7,000 remaining prisoners were liberated by the Red Army.
In 2005, the United Nations designated 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The commemorations are held under the honorary patronage of the Polish president, Karol Nawrocki, and will be streamed online.
(ał)
Source: PAP