Some 20,000 visitors from around the world gathered on Sunday to commemorate the victims of the Mauthausen concentration camp, including Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, and a large part of the federal government. Van der Bellen warned against turning a blind eye, while Oskar Deutsch, President of the Jewish Community of Vienna, condemned Iran and Hamas for antisemitism.
Delegations from across the globe traditionally attend the liberation ceremony and lay wreaths at the former roll call square. The number of Holocaust survivors able to participate is dwindling. Marking the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, three “Mauthausen babies” – Hana Berger-Moran, Mark Olsky, and Eva Clarke – led the commemorative procession. They were born shortly before liberation in the camp or during prisoner transports.
Van der Bellen: “It Started with Looking Away”
Official Austria was represented by numerous political figures alongside Van der Bellen, including Chancellor Christian Stocker, Vice Chancellor Andreas Babler, Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger, and the presidents of the National Council Peter Haubner and Doris Bures. At the ceremony, politicians do not give speeches but participate silently in the procession.
King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia laid a white floral wreath at the sarcophagus. Spaniards were among the first large prisoner groups in Mauthausen and were forced to build the infamous “Stairs of Death.” Van der Bellen emphasized in a written statement that Mauthausen serves as a warning: “It started with silence. It started with looking away when antisemitism and racism revealed their ugly faces and slowly took hold of society.” Stocker similarly stated that Mauthausen “must always remind us of where authoritarian ideologies, hatred, and exclusion can lead.”
“Knowledge Makes Us Responsible for a Never Again”
Willi Mernyi, chair of the Mauthausen Committee Austria, drew parallels to the present: “Many people are pessimistic about the future and their children’s future,” he said, comparing the sentiment to that before the rise of National Socialism. But unlike then, “We know now what is possible. And this knowledge makes us responsible for a ‘never again.’” Guy Dockendorf, President of the Comité International de Mauthausen, urged young people to carry forward Mauthausen’s lessons amid rising right-wing regimes and threats to democracy worldwide.
Before the official ceremony, an ecumenical service and commemorations by various victim groups and nations took place. Lutheran Bishop Michael Chalupka reminded attendees that such experiences led to the codification of human rights after the war and the founding of the United Nations. “When the universality of human rights is questioned and international law trampled upon, we cannot remain silent,” he said.
Deutsch Warns of “Eliminationist Antisemitism”
Oskar Deutsch, head of Vienna’s Jewish community, drew a direct line from the Holocaust to current threats in the Middle East: “The ideological descendants of Nazism are still active today—in Iranian regime offices planning the destruction of Israel or in Hamas tunnels committing atrocities against Jews.”
Between 1938 and 1945, around 200,000 people from more than 40 nations were imprisoned in Mauthausen and its over 40 satellite camps. About half did not survive. The U.S. Army liberated the camp on May 5, 1945. The Mauthausen memorial is the largest in a series of commemorations at former subcamps, such as those held in Gunskirchen, Gusen, and Ebensee. The theme of all events this year is “Together for a Never Again!”
According to joint estimates by the Mauthausen Committee and police, about 20,000 people attended this year’s event. The next liberation ceremony is scheduled for May 10, 2026.
