Leon Weintraub turned 100 on January 1st and survived the Holocaust, so he isn’t about to be defeated by Microsoft Teams. After some fiddling with the sound he is finally audible from his home in Stockholm and, in a clear voice, delivers his urgent message on World Holocaust Day: remain watchful as Holocaust denial gains ground and begins to undermine European democracy itself. “This thoughtlessness or malicious intent to trivialise or distort this horrific history makes me very sad,” he says. As the world remembers the horrors of Auschwitz, and its liberation on January 27th, 1945, during the second World War, Weintraub belongs to a shrinking circle of survivors of the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. To halt this slide, in their book they present a list of requests – demands – from survivors.

Source: The Irish Times January 27, 2026 11:32 UTC