but what we do have here especially in europe we have certain political parties which have gained popularity trying to read for him the narrative around the 2nd world war around the holocaust for example here in germany we have the a f d some of the politicians there have spoken out against what they call a cult of guilt is around in world war 2 and we also have and you touched on this a little bit more in poland the law and justice party. they've been criticized for not doing enough to combat anti-semitism and said that they have been highlighting the polish terrorists heroism that there are goals in world war 2 where you think we stand right now at this point in history when it when it comes to the narrative of what happened and what could that mean for our future and i think you know history has always been written by the victors of the war situations and history has always been manipulated by by politicians and rulers for their own

political purposes this is of course nothing new but i think it needs to be said particularly in this case and at this time it needs to be said that these questions should be left to professional historians the. politicians and i think frankly also we journalists should be very careful on the basis of simply a superficial study of the events of interpret them and i think that that is something that is happening to members in a very unseemly raal going on at the moment in which. president putin of of russia has accused opponent for example of being a party causing the 2nd world war. i am not a professional historian and so i feel hesitant to voice their opinion on this i can only say that from my reading that of the last majority of professional historians say that is nonsense. that's the soviet union

under the nose of stalin was partly responsible for causing the 2nd world war that was also is also a resolution of the european union the parliament which are accused has accused russia of that whereby i would also say i don't i'm not personally convinced that that's the role of the european that i think these things these christians are better left to historians rather than people feeling duty to each other ok john stand by you're with us through the end of this ceremony which we are currently watching taking place in auschwitz birkenau we have to mention some candles being lain there as as people remember what happened in the years preceding 75 years ago today the horrors at auschwitz birkenau where we know that. well over a 1000000 jews roma sinti gays political prisoners were killed by the nazis we're going to have you now actually from auschwitz we're going to go to

our correspondent who is standing by. and the section from our poland desk is standing by for us and why so i just like to ask you. because we were talking about this a little bit with john as well holocaust commemoration becoming a very sensitive issue in poland as we mentioned what is your take on what we heard from the polish president president did as what he said in the introduction of the ceremony. well indeed commemorating holocaust and commemorating kosher it's a it's a very sensitive thing and it requires a lot of tact indeed the speech of the polish president i would say it was it was quite brief to be honest i guess it's appropriate the polish president knew that

the attention of the world today should be paid to do more than $200.00 survivors here today to the site of the former death camp in auschwitz but of course he made some important statements statement in his speech to polish president said that the through the vote holocaust must not die he also said as the head of the state as the president of republic of poland he would return you his commitment to protect to guard and cultivate the truth about the holocaust and the truth about how she is he also said that distorting history falsifying history or denying color caused or attempts to misuse history of oceans or whole of couse for political ends she said it was offense to the to the victims and survivors let's talk a little bit more about those survivors because 3 of the 4 survivors were actually

born in poland the 1st. dog and she she is of special importance of course in terms of keeping a lot. the memory of the holocaust tell us more. well but about dragon born 925 it's a person with an unbelievable biography and biography stands for the fate of millions of jews in europe and what has happened today well let me just briefly tell you about it she was taken into the ghetto after the war broke out parents perished in trouble in the country because. a german death camp in poland then she was sent from ghetto here to auschwitz then she was sent for a death march and then she was again sent to another concentration camp and today

coming back to auschwitz and speaking in front of of the public she gave a very very emotional testimony of how life here in auschwitz was. we also heard from the journalist and the head of the jewish historical insisted in warsaw also a very interesting choice given the controversy surrounding museums historical accuracy in poland what did you have to say. well it was a very very my opinion interesting depressive 1st speech from one to risky as you said he's a well known and very new journalist in poland also a holocaust and it's survivor and he said that things like this like auschwitz like color cows they would not come out from no no were they would start step by step he told about the thirty's in germany he told about the situations were the

public parks or the public transportation was being closed for example for the jewish people he said it was like there were small steps but they were coming and. coming can you step into society would somehow get familiar with the fact that you may exclude some parts of the society and as he said if the society is familiar with that the alternatives would attack they would speak up then and it would end up in things like color house and he said many times he said do not be indifferent he said to react if there is something bad happening to other people we also heard from a member of the wartime polish resistent this is also significance. yes the organizers of the of the ceremony today wanted to give voice to. different

survivor groups of course there were people speaking for the jewish survivors there was a woman speaking for the a role of survivors and there was also a polish man speaking for the polish prisoners of auschwitz camp and for the underground movement which was active in poland he was giving his testimony he's a memories he said something like this that he never really uses this memories about auschwitz and what happened here he said he put it in a box and closed the box and threw it into the water but sometimes on days like today he would pull the box out of the water and open it for a while and then close it again if i 6 month joining us from auschwitz thank you. let's get more now with john barack was joining us here in studio who has been watching this ceremony with us we're seeing behind me the polish president

who spoke today tell us a little bit more. about his message because i mean this was the 1st message that we heard. i think the background that one needs to say is this this is a political background is a tension between. and as a president due to the polish government. which. and and the russians the russians have retaliated president putin specifically have retaliated to the polish suggestion that the russia was partly responsible for the 2nd world war by accusing poland of being partly responsible for the 2nd world war. and the. is this really really culminated in the 4 days ago i suppose in the memorial. held in jerusalem to which president putin was invited to speak and the polish

president who was wanting to be invited was not invited and that this is an unfortunate circumstance because particularly because we know now although for many decades that the russians denied the existence of a protocol to the non-aggression pact between germany and russia that there was a protocol the russians everybody now admits it including the russians it was a protocol that with stalin and hitler decided to carve up poland between them and when shortly after germany invaded poland from the west russia invaded poland from the east and they put divided up between them it now that just come out and this is startle fact not denied by any historians president putin just as recently as i think 2017 said described it as a necessary evil for the defense of russia that is of course deeply painful and

offensive to the polish people and that is that is the the background to this this mudslinging ok john stand by we want to get another element of all of this because the name auschwitz is of course soaked in images of cruelty of the worst kind it had started as a work camp but ended up as a place of extermination the nazis who ran it murdered more than a 1000000 people and after the war many faced justice. today auschwitz birkenau is a memorial site museum research center the aim is to keep memories alive and aid efforts to fight anti semitism is in a phobia as mark erath reports. work search to free this cynical not. slogan looms about the entrance to the auschwitz memorial horrors were committed here now it has become an important tourist destination for visitors from all around the world over the past 10 years visitor numbers have doubled.

more than $2000000.00 people now visit auschwitz every year and. it is heartbreaking to see how cool people can be it's it's very moving to be hard not to cry and we see on t.v. on for your. first time that you see the 1st time in person that's pretty reset itself is really important like a place is giving greet people kind of impression about what happened to people when true and so on but i think that we are paying too much attention to the buildings to the place itself to the general names and things like that and to small attention to what was really important so where it all came from. the memorial site is set to add a new exhibition very much to accommodate all the visitors pavel's the wicki ses the unending stream of guests has posed a real challenge. the numbers of visitors that we're getting are already

overwhelming this is just a clean difficult operation so we are also planning to build a completely new visitor center that will be slightly at the side of the historical . site of the comp and it will also help us from does very well just a cool point of view or. even the pit so winter cold doesn't stop people from visiting the barracks in the fear from now concentration camp. here the nazis murdered more than 1000000 people mostly jews they died through malnutrition disease or in the gas chamber now the barracks a crumbling but renovation work has started the goal is to preserve as much of the original buildings as possible and yet unable them to withstand hard winters a task that may take decades to accomplish. this venue the reconstruction work calls for great diligence to restore the structure to the original state so that it

is very painstaking work that requires great accuracy and attention to detail we don't you mentioned everything in advance in order to be able to restore the place accurately and something that's is the. thoughts of. precision is also key when it comes to preparing items to go on display in this case conservation material used in the past has to be carefully removed because it is now understood to be damaging the exhibits the goal is not to repair objects but to preserve them. these objects reflect the history of auschwitz so there deformation contamination the fact that some objects are not complete all this is testimony to what happened here. still there are plans to change the exhibition the present one was largely designed in the fifty's by survivors who

focused on the fates of victims pictures of the perpetrators were hardly bearable for them but in the future their history will be included as well when we ask one of the most important educational questions about the story about us which is the question why does not the story about the victims does a story about people who accepted this ideology chose to join the nazi party cho chose to join the s.s. and day where here and they were working and at the same time they were bringing up their children. it's been 75 years since i was liberated germany is now providing a total of $120000000.00 euros to support the site to ensure the horrors of the holocaust are not forgotten. and standing by for us live from auschwitz we have our chief political editor macare the questioner who has been following the commemoration for us today 75 years on mahela what was germany's role today at the sarah.