At Auschwitz, a Solemn Ceremony at a Time of Rising Nationalism

Europe|At Auschwitz, a Solemn Ceremony at a Time of Rising Nationalism

More than 50 world leaders, including King Charles III, will join a dwindling group of Nazi death camp survivors on Monday in southern Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, where more than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered.

A day of solemn ceremony, shadowed by a resurgence of nationalism in Germany and several other European countries, will take place near a former gas chamber and crematory in the Polish town of Oswiecim, whose name was Germanized to Auschwitz during Hitler’s 1939-1945 occupation of Poland.

The commemoration will begin early Monday with survivors of Auschwitz — who numbered thousands at the end of World War II in 1945 but have mostly since died — laying wreaths on the Wall of Death. The wall, in a courtyard between former barracks, is where prisoners were executed by SS guards and remains pockmarked with bullet holes.

Ronald S. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress and chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation, said in an interview that “this is the most important anniversary we are going to have because of the shrinking number of survivors and because of what is happening in the world today.”

Fewer than 50 survivors will take part in Monday’s commemoration, less than half the number who attended the 75th anniversary. “In five years, there will be very few left,” Mr. Lauder said. “And those who are still alive won’t have the energy to go.”