Former inmates of Nazi concentration camp in Poland will speak at ceremony marking 80 years since its liberation

Kings and queens, presidents, prime ministers and dignitaries from 54 countries will assemble at Auschwitz on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation, but the world’s focus will be firmly on its few remaining survivors.

About 50 former inmates are expected to attend the ceremony at the complex in southern Poland where Nazi Germany murdered more than a million people, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war and gay people.

Elon Musk grew up with the privileges of a stratified racial order and Peter Thiel lived in a city that venerated Hitler

When Elon Musk’s arm shot out in a stiff arm salute at Donald Trump’s inaugural celebrations, startled viewers mostly drew the obvious comparison.

But in the fired-up debate about Musk’s intent that followed, as the world’s richest man insisted he wasn’t trying to be a Nazi, speculation inevitably focused on whether his roots in apartheid-era South Africa offered an insight.

Monday 27 January is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Three survivors, two of whom were interned there as teenagers, tell Kate Connolly their stories.