Silence pervades the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau today. Sometimes the only sounds are the soft footsteps of visitors, people who come from all over the world to mourn and to learn, and the voices of their guides speaking in hushed tones into microphones trying to explain the ungraspable.

This International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi labor and extermination camp where 1.1 million people were murdered. SS chief Heinrich Himmler was the mastermind of what’s known as the “final solution” the deliberate and systematic plan for the mass murder of the Jewish people

Tova Friedman, 86, is one of a dwindling number of survivors sharing their message on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025.