Holocaust survivors return for memorial ceremony on 80th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp

• ‘I waved at my mother and she waved back. That was the last time we saw her’: three Auschwitz survivors tells their stories

US president Donald Trump repeated his intention to take control over Greenland over the weekend, saying he thought the US “are going to have it,” and sparking further fears about the prospect of a territorial dispute between the US and Denmark, a Nato ally.

“I do believe Greenland, we’ll get because it really has to do with freedom of the world,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the United States, other than we’re the one that can provide the freedom.”

As the grandchild of a survivor, I’m proud to keep his testimony alive, in the hope that people never forget the horrors humanity is capable of

Yesterday, I watched A Real Pain in the cinema. The film is a beautiful representation of two cousins, united in love and grief for their grandma, exploring their family history on a heritage trip to Poland. This experience is familiar to so many Jews I know – whether attending a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau or visiting Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the idea of a poignant pilgrimage to see where our ancestors lived, died, survived and escaped from, is commonplace.

I’ve certainly had these experiences. When I was 12, my paternal grandparents, Ann and Henry Ebner, took me to Vienna, where Henry fled from the Nazis with his parents when he was two, arriving as a refugee in the UK just weeks before the start of the second world war. In the same year, my maternal grandma, Anna (Panni), took me to Budapest, to see where she and her husband, my grandpa, George Garai (Gyuri), had lived. Panni was six when Hitler’s troops invaded Hungary in 1944, and she survived by being hidden in an orphanage. The memories shared with me on this pilgrimage were painful ones; being separated from her parents, returning home after the war and sitting by the window waiting to see which family members would come back – and so many never did.

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.

Eighty years after the Nazi death camp was freed, the testimony of survivors is as crucial as ever

Memory is fragile. A decade ago, 300 survivors gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate the Nazi death camp’s liberation. On Monday, 50 will assemble for the 80th anniversary. The median age of Holocaust survivors was estimated at 86 in a study published last year. At 97, Esther Senot is still keeping the promise she made to her dying sister Fanny, whose last wish was that she “tell what happened to us ... so that we are not forgotten by history.” Almost 1 million of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were killed at the complex in German-occupied Poland, along with smaller numbers of Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, gay men, political prisoners and others. Its name has become synonymous with evil.

The Auschwitz museum’s decision to ban speeches by politicians this year may be in part pragmatic. Holocaust memory has too often been a battleground in Poland. The museum’s mission stands above politics, yet cannot be wholly insulated from global affairs. Vladimir Putin has attended in the past, but there will be no Russian presence this time. Earlier this month, Poland’s deputy foreign minister appeared to suggest that authorities would be obliged to arrest the Israeli prime minister if he travelled to the ceremony, because the international criminal court has issued a warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, insisted Mr Netanyahu would be able to attend safely, though Israel’s delegation is not expected to include him.

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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.

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, House 88 with its chilling past has been turned into centre to combat hate

The villa where Rudolf Höss and his family lived stood immediately next to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The garden wall of the villa was the wall of the camp.

At Christmas time, they put up a tree in the living room and festooned it with ornaments and candles. In the garden, there was a pond, a sandpit, a slide, several picnic benches and a greenhouse with exotic plants. At night, Höss tucked his sons and daughters into bed and said: “Schlaf schön meine Kinder” – sleep well my children.