The New York Times 2025-01-28 00:11:02


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Jerusalem Jan. 27, 6:09 p.m.

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Patrick KingsleyBilal Shbair and Mike Ives

Here’s the latest on the cease-fire.

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians were walking toward their homes in northern Gaza on Monday, nearly 16 months after they were forced to flee at the start of Israel’s military offensive. A column of people that stretched for miles marched north along Gaza’s coastal road, many carrying their few possessions on their heads, on makeshift carts and in plastic bags slung over their backs.

The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas remained in place after it appeared to falter over the weekend, but it was unclear what the displaced Gazans would be returning to. As they began arriving in Gaza City, in the north of the territory, they confronted a wasteland of rubble after the Israeli military destroyed whole neighborhoods and Hamas booby-trapped many buildings.

Many of those returning had spent the war sheltering in tents, after Israel ordered roughly a million people to flee northern Gaza in October 2023 ahead of its military invasion and then prevented their return. On Monday, some used bikes, wheelchairs and trolleys to carry their belongings. One man attached wheels to a plastic box, turning it into a makeshift stroller for a baby.

On Saturday, Hamas released four female Israeli soldiers who had been taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel, in turn, handed over 200 Palestinian prisoners. But on Sunday, their week-old truce appeared to waver. Israel said it would delay the return of displaced people to northern Gaza, as required by the cease-fire agreement, partly because Hamas had reneged on a plan to release Arbel Yehud, a female Israeli civilian who was seized during the Hamas-led assault on Israel in October 2023.

After hours of tense negotiations, the two sides reached a new agreement late Sunday under which Hamas would hand over Ms. Yehud, along with other hostages, by the end of the week. In exchange, Israeli forces began allowing displaced Palestinians to move north on Monday morning, opening the coastal road to people on foot and a second, interior road to vehicles, which were subject to inspection.

Here’s what else to know:

  • Violence in Lebanon: Israeli forces opened fire for a second straight day as residents of southern Lebanon sought to return to their homes along the border, Lebanese officials said. At least two people were injured, officials said, after at least two dozen people were killed and scores injured in Israeli fire on Sunday. Israeli forces, who have warned against returning to border areas without their approval, have remained in southern Lebanon as a 60-day truce with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah was extended on Sunday until Feb. 18.

  • Fragile truces: Though Israel’s cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon were tested over the weekend, analysts said that all sides wanted to avoid full-scale fighting for now.

  • Displaced Palestinians: President Trump told reporters that he would like Jordan and Egypt to take in more displaced Palestinians as part of an effort to “clean out” Gaza. Egypt and Jordan rejected the suggestion, saying the only way forward was Palestinian statehood.

  • Show of force: The carefully choreographed release of Israeli hostages on Saturday highlighted how powerful Hamas remains inside Gaza, even after Israel killed thousands of its members and demolished much of its infrastructure.

Col. Avi Benov, a physcian who is deputy chief of the Israeli military’s medical corps, has just briefed reporters about the return of hostages from Gaza. He said that several of the Israeli women who were released from captivity in recent days had spent the past eight months underground in Hamas tunnels without seeing sunlight.

The women who have been returned so far — three civilians and four soldiers — were all suffering effects of “mild starvation” and low vitamin levels, Benov said. Some still have shrapnel in their bodies from the Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, 2023, when they were abducted to Gaza, he added.

Among the household possessions that people carried north were staples necessary because Israeli attacks have destroyed basic services in Gaza. Some people had loaded plastic water jugs onto donkey carts. Others shouldered canisters of gas for cooking and heating.

Israeli forces again open fire as civilians try to return home in southern Lebanon, officials say.

Israeli forces opened fire toward residents of southern Lebanon for a second straight day on Monday as people pressed on with attempts to return to their homes along the border, a day after at least two dozen people were killed and scores injured in Israeli attacks, Lebanese officials said.

The Israeli fire on Sunday was the deadliest bout of violence in Lebanon since the war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, ended with a truce in November. At least two people were injured in the renewed violence on Monday, including a child, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Israeli military said on Monday that it had redeployed in areas of southern Lebanon, and repeated calls for Lebanese residents to wait for their approval before returning home. The Lebanese military had sent reinforcements to parts of southern Lebanon earlier in the day, preparing to enter some towns and safeguard civilians, Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported.

Israeli forces killed at least 24 people and injured over 134 others on Sunday, Lebanese officials said, after thousands of Lebanese marched to southern towns and villages. Those areas remain occupied by Israel past a 60-day deadline for its withdrawal under the November cease-fire agreement, which called for both Israel and Hezbollah forces to leave southern Lebanon and for the Lebanese Army and U.N. peacekeepers to deploy in force there.

The Israeli military said in a statement on Sunday that it had fired “warning shots” to disperse what it called “rioters.” Last week, Israel had indicated that it would remain in southern Lebanon despite the deadline, amid doubts about the Lebanese Army’s ability to stymie Hezbollah’s resurgence.

Negotiators had hoped that the U.S.-brokered cease-fire by now would have given way for a more permanent settlement. But as the 60-day deadline elapsed on Sunday, the White House issued a statement stating that the initial agreement would be extended until Feb. 18. The Lebanese prime minister’s office confirmed the extension, which they said followed discussions with U.S. officials. The flurry of diplomatic activity appeared designed to buy time and stave off further bouts of violence.

The bloodshed on Sunday sparked urgent calls for restraint by the U.N. amid growing fears of a sustained Israeli occupation and renewed hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Hezbollah, however, stopped short of their characteristic calls for revenge in the wake of the killings.

Battered by the deadliest war with Israel in decades, experts say the group has little impetus to reignite a conflict that would only weaken the group further as it attempts to recover. Instead, Hezbollah called on the international community in a statement to “assume its responsibilities” and pressure Israel to “withdraw completely from our lands.”

“We’re so overjoyed,” said Malak al-Haj Ahmed, 17, a high-school student taking selfies with her family beside the coastal road in Gaza. “There’s no moment more joyful than returning home.”

As residents began returning to northern Gaza, Israeli forces have reportedly opened fire for a second day on Lebanese attempting to return to their homes in southern Lebanon in defiance of Israeli warnings, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. Lebanon’s health ministry said two people were injured, including a child.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Lebanese military sent reinforcements to parts of southern Lebanon earlier in the day, preparing to enter some towns and safeguard civilians attempting to return home, the agency reported.

Awad Abid, a former taxi driver from northern Gaza, said he was waiting a few days to see if he could hitch a ride for his young children, who could not return to the north on foot. Abid is currently living in a tent camp near the southern city of Khan Younis that many people have left over the past several hours.

He said that given the choice, he would prefer to leave Gaza and build a new life. “There are a lot of issues — people whose homes were destroyed and are living in other houses, disputes over property, problems between families that began during their time in Khan Younis,” he said. “This war tore apart our social fabric.”

The Gazan government press office said in a statement that 135,000 tents and caravans were “immediately and urgently” needed in Gaza City and northern Gaza to accommodate the thousands of displaced people who were returning to an area where 90 percent of the buildings and infrastructure had been destroyed by Israeli bombardment.

The Gazan Health Ministry said in a statement that it had set up 19 emergency medical points along the route that thousands of displaced Palestinians were taking on their journey back to northern Gaza. After territory’s healthcare system was crippled by 15 months of Israeli bombardment, these medical points were set up “to provide urgent health care to citizens returning to their areas,” the statement said.

As thousands trek north, many other displaced Palestinians have decided to wait until later this week to return to northern Gaza when they hope the roads will be less crowded. “I’m so happy — I’ve been waiting to return home for more than a year,” said Khalil el-Halabi, 70, a displaced person originally from Gaza City. “But I’ll have to wait another day because there’s an endless human chain on the road.”

Having walked miles from the southern regions of Gaza, thousands of Palestinians are arriving in Gaza City, in the north of the territory, according to video footage. Some of them are carrying very few, if any, belongings. Many will be returning to homes badly damaged or destroyed by the war.

Since Palestinians still can’t drive along the coastal road to Gaza City, some are using bikes, wheelchairs and trolleys to carry their belongings. One man has attached wheels to a plastic box, turning it into a makeshift stroller for his baby.

News Analysis

The Gaza and Lebanon truces are fragile, but all sides want them to hold, analysts say.

The cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon will most likely hold for now, despite being tested to their limits over the weekend, because all sides want to avoid full-scale fighting at least for a few weeks, analysts said.

In southern Lebanon, Israeli troops remained in position past the deadline on Sunday for their withdrawal, amid Israeli claims that Hezbollah had broken its own pledge to leave the area. In Gaza, Hamas failed to release a female hostage whom Israel had hoped would be freed on Saturday, prompting Israel to delay the agreed return of displaced Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza.

But even as each side accused the other of reneging on their deals, analysts said, both Israel and its opponents had reasons to remain flexible and temporarily overlook the other’s transgressions.

Hezbollah, though angry at Israel for keeping troops in southern Lebanon, would risk a devastating Israeli counterattack if it renews its rocket strikes on Israeli cities. Hamas wants to retain power in Gaza and risks losing it if war returns. And Israel needs to maintain the current arrangement in Gaza long enough to free at least two dozen more hostages. Israeli leaders have also appeared eager to placate President Trump, who campaigned on a promise to keep peace in the Middle East.

Illustrating their desire to prolong the Gaza truce, Israel and Hamas seemed to resolve the weekend’s crisis close to midnight on Sunday. The government of Qatar, a mediator between the sides, said that the female hostage, Arbel Yehud, would be freed this week along with two others who would be released ahead of schedule. In return, Israel said that it would allow displaced Palestinians to return to northern Gaza on Monday morning.

As for Lebanon, the White House announced that the truce there would be extended until Feb. 18, though there was no immediate comment from Israel or Hezbollah. The Lebanese prime minister’s office confirmed the extension.

Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. negotiator in Middle East peace talks, said, “They’re going to get through the next few weeks — beyond that is anyone’s guess.”

“These are not agreements between the United States and Switzerland. They’re agreements that depend on each side giving the other a certain discretion and margin for maneuver,” he added. “That is their weakness, but also their strength.”

That wriggle room ultimately allowed both truces to survive the weekend, even as Israeli troops shot and killed people in both Lebanon and Gaza who were trying to return to areas still controlled by Israel.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said that 22 people had been killed by Israeli fire in southern Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority’s news agency said that one person had been killed in Gaza as large crowds in both places gathered near Israeli troops, demanding to go home.

But by Monday morning, the standoff in Gaza appeared set to ease. In Lebanon, Hezbollah issued a statement praising the residents attempting to return and calling on foreign powers to force Israel to withdraw. But Hezbollah did not resume its rocket fire.

Analysts say that Hezbollah is unlikely to risk further losses while its leadership is decimated and its benefactor, Iran, is weakened. Also, the group’s main arms supply route, through Syria, was blocked in December when the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Hezbollah, was ousted by rebels.

Hezbollah’s commanders do “still have some rockets, they have some guns, they can do something,” said Hanin Ghaddar, a Lebanese analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a foreign affairs research group.

“But it’s suicidal if they do this, because they know that any kind of attack by Hezbollah in Israel means that Israel will take the opportunity to come back full blast and annihilate whatever is left of them,” Ms. Ghaddar added.

Hezbollah is also probably wary of losing support among its Shiite Muslim base, particularly in next year’s parliamentary elections, Ms. Ghaddar said. Lebanon’s Shiite community paid the largest price for Hezbollah’s decision to go to war with Israel in October 2023 in solidarity with its ally Hamas. Shiite villages and towns in southern Lebanon bore the brunt of Israel’s ensuing air campaign and ground invasion.

“If the Shia do not vote for them, this is the end of Hezbollah,” said Ms. Ghaddar, the author of a book about Hezbollah’s relationship with its base. “They cannot really do anything if they don’t know 100 percent that the Shia community is going to support it.”

Because Hezbollah is less likely to resume fighting, the Gaza cease-fire is considered the frailest of the two truces.

But its biggest stress test is not expected until the beginning of March, when Hamas and Israel must decide whether to extend the arrangement beyond an initial 42-day truce.

For now, Israel has signaled it wants to maintain the cease-fire to sustain the flow of hostage releases. But an extension would require both sides to agree to a permanent end to the war — a bridge that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has appeared unwilling to cross. Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition government relies on far-right lawmakers who seek permanent Israeli control of Gaza, and his administration could collapse if the war ends with Hamas still in charge.

The terms of the agreement allow for some flexibility. The truce can continue beyond the 42-day mark as long as both sides remain negotiating about whether to make the arrangement permanent.

But Israeli officials say they will not remain locked in endlessly fruitless negotiations, especially if Hamas stops releasing hostages. And Hamas is unlikely to keep freeing the hostages, its main bargaining chip, without an Israeli promise to cease hostilities permanently.

“Hamas wants a cease-fire but not at all costs,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political scientist from Gaza. “They want a cease-fire that ends the war.”

Much could depend on President Trump’s willingness to cajole Mr. Netanyahu toward a more lasting truce. Mr. Trump’s private messages to the Israeli prime minister were crucial to the forging of the initial phase, but it remains to be seen whether the American president will maintain that position beyond a few weeks.

“If Netanyahu succeeds in convincing Trump of the need to renew the war, there’ll probably be a renewal of the war,” Mr. Abusada said. “If Trump keeps his promise that he doesn’t want any wars and he wants more peace — whether it’s in Gaza, Ukraine or all over the world — that’s a different thing.”

The people on the road are carrying bags, mattresses, duvets — whatever possessions they can carry on their backs. Many are walking on foot, but some are waiting for buses to take them closer to the Netzarim corridor.

As I walked through the town of Deir al Balah to reach the coast, it was hard to move because there were so many displaced people packing up their belongings. People were taking down their tents and loading donkeys with their possessions.

I’m next to the coastal road, watching thousands of people walk north along the seafront toward the Netzarim corridor. There are children, mothers, fathers — many of them carrying bags of their possessions as they finally head home.

Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has described the re-opening of the coastal road as a humiliation. Ben-Gvir, a far-right politician who opposed the cease-fire, said in a Telegram post: “This is what total surrender looks like.”

The Israeli military has confirmed that it has opened Gaza’s coastal road to Palestinians heading northward. It is the first time in roughly 16 months that civilians who fled south in October 2023 have been able to return home.

Hamas hailed the return of Gazans to their homes in the north as a victory in a statement on Monday morning. It described the scenes of people walking with joy.

Thousands of Palestinians are walking north along the Gaza coastline, footage broadcast live by The Associated Press shows, after the Israeli military said on Monday morning that it had opened access to northern Gaza.

Displaced Gazans in the enclave’s south can start returning on foot to their homes in the north starting at 7 a.m. local time on Monday, Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, announced on social media. Two hours later, vehicles will also be allowed to head north via a different route and will be subject to inspections, according to Adraee. Many thousands of Gazans evacuated their homes in northern Gaza months ago following orders from the Israeli military and have been unable to return since then.

The White House added that the United States would continue trilateral talks with Lebanon and Israel to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners captured after the attack by Hamas in Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the regional war.

Israel received a list from Hamas detailing the condition of the 26 remaining hostages scheduled to be released in the initial phase of the cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, according to a statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office. The list is widely expected to clarify who among the 26 hostages were still living. Hamas confirmed it gave mediators a list with “the required information.”

Israel also agreed to provide a list of 400 Palestinians who had been arrested since Oct. 7, 2023, every Sunday during the first phase.

Who is Arbel Yehud, the Israeli hostage at the center of the dispute?

Arbel Yehud is the female Israeli hostage at the center of the crisis testing the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas. She was seized during the Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, 2023, from her home in Nir Oz, a village in southern Israel near the border of the Palestinian enclave.

Ms. Yehud, who was 28 at the time, was kidnapped along with her partner, Ariel Cunio, who also remains in Gaza.

Ms. Yehud is the last female civilian hostage that Israel believes is most likely alive. Another civilian woman, Shiri Bibas, remains in Gaza after she was abducted from Nir Oz with her two young sons, Ariel, who was 4 at the time, and Kfir, who was 9 months. The Israeli military has expressed grave concern for the lives of Ms. Bibas and her children, though their deaths have not been confirmed.

Ms. Yehud’s brother, Dolev Yehud, was missing for months and was also assumed to have been kidnapped. It later became clear that he never made it into Gaza: In June 2024, the Israeli authorities declared him dead after his remains were identified in Nir Oz through new testing.

Under the terms of the cease-fire deal, Ms. Yehud should have been among the first two groups of hostages released on Jan. 19 and Jan. 25, according to the Israeli authorities. Israel had demanded that its female civilians be released before the captive female soldiers, four of whom were released on Saturday.

It appears Ms. Yehud may be in the custody of another group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. An official with that group told The New York Times on Sunday that she would be released before next Saturday.

Just after midnight on Monday, Israel, Qatar and Hamas announced that a resolution had been finalized for the release of Arbel Yehud and two other Israeli hostages by next Friday, with three more hostages to be released on Saturday. In exchange, Israel would begin allowing Palestinians in Gaza who had been displaced to return to the north of the enclave, the officials said.

Ms. Yehud has deep roots in the community of Nir Oz as a third-generation member of her family to reside there, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a grass-roots organization that advocates for the release of the hostages. She worked in the community’s education system before becoming a guide at GrooveTech, an innovative learning center in southern Israel that focuses on space exploration and technology.

Ms. Yehud and Mr. Cunio had returned from a tour in South America shortly before the 2023 attack, according to the forum.

Nir Oz has become a symbol of the Israeli military, intelligence and government debacle that led up to the attack and failed to protect the country’s citizens that day. It was a small kibbutz, or communal village, of roughly 400 people before the attack, during which more than a quarter of its population were killed or kidnapped.

Speaking at a protest on behalf of the female hostages in New York in December, Lian Weiss, a relative of Ms. Yehud, pleaded for their release. “Please close your eyes for a moment and imagine: Imagine it is you. You are ripped from your home,” she said, adding, “We cannot let this become their forever. Every moment we delay is another moment of agony for these women. We must act. We have the power to change their fate.”

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

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Dozens of world leaders, including King Charles III, joined 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, began early Monday 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 got underway with survivors of Auschwitz — who numbered thousands at the end of World War II in 1945 but have mostly since died — hobbling into a courtyard between two red-brick former barracks to place lit candles on the Wall of Death.

The wall, flanked on one side by a building in which SS physicians conducted grotesque and often fatal experiments on female inmates, is where prisoners and Polish resistance fighters were executed by the Nazis. It remains pockmarked with bullet holes.

On the other side of the courtyard where the opening ceremony took place is the building where, in September 1941, the SS first tested the use of Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany and later used for mass murder in gas chambers.

Aging survivors, many of them infirm and walking with canes or held up by young relatives, paused briefly and silently at the wall after placing their candles. They were followed by President Andrzej Duda of Poland and Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. Both crossed themselves next to a row of wreathes with red and white roses.

The Auschwitz museum’s flag, with blue and white stripes — the same as those on the uniforms all prisoners had to wear before they were gassed or sent to work as slave labor at German factories outside the camp — flew on a row of flagpoles atop the wall.

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.”

“We thought the virus of anti-Semitism was dead,” he said, “but it was just in hiding.”

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.”

The number of foreign dignitaries, however, keeps growing. This year’s guest list, the largest ever, includes scores of government leaders and at least eight kings and queens. Among them are Germany’s departing chancellor, Olaf Scholz and its president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

With less than a month to go before Germany holds a general election, Mr. Scholz, his likely successor, Friedrich Merz, and other mainstream German politicians are scrambling to curb support for Alternative for Germany, a hard-right party known as AfD that is widely seen as a dangerous throwback to the nationalism that brought Hitler to power in the 1930s.

At an election rally on Saturday in eastern Germany, AfD politicians and Elon Musk, a top adviser to President Trump, who spoke by video link, urged Germans not to feel guilty for the Nazi-era crimes of their grandparents.

That and calls at the rally for a “Great Germany,” said Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, on Sunday, “sounded all too familiar and ominous, especially only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”

None of the leaders at the event on Monday will speak. As part of the anniversary events, the house where the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz lived with his family — which was the subject of the Oscar-winning movie “The Zone of Interest” — opened to visitors for the first time following its sale by Polish owners to the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based group.

Mr. Cywinski, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum director, said his state-run institution wanted to avoid political speeches and to put survivors and the remembrance of Nazi victims at the center of Monday’s events.

“Memory,” he said in an interview, “is not only crying when you look to the past, it is not only empathy when you look to the victims. This is not enough. Memory, I think, is really the key for today’s time and the key for finding your position today.”

In a brief address to Polish television, Mr. Duda, the president, said his country had a special duty to preserve memory. “We Poles, on whose land, occupied at that time by Nazi Germans, the Germans built this extermination industry and this concentration camp, are today the guardians of memory,” he said.

“We will always remember, and through this memory, the world will never again allow such a dramatic human catastrophe to occur,” he added.

A U.S. delegation will be led by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, who played a key role in negotiating a recent Gaza truce agreement between Israel and Hamas, and Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of commerce. Also in the delegation is Charles Kushner, the father of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and who is Mr. Trump’s choice as ambassador to France.

Russia, which used to regularly take part in anniversary events at Auschwitz, was not invited to this year’s commemoration, despite the Soviet Army’s liberation of the camp in January 1945. Representatives from Moscow have been banished from anniversary events since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which the Kremlin justified on the false pretext that Ukraine, whose president is Jewish, was run by Nazis. Ukraine was invited, and will be represented by its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin has turned the Soviet role in the defeat of Hitler into a national cult in which anyone at odds with the Kremlin is cast as a Nazi. Never mentioned is the fact that the Soviet Union was effectively Hitler’s ally until 1941, when the Nazis began gassing Jews at Auschwitz. Moscow and Berlin signed a nonaggression pact in 1939 that led to the invasion of Poland by Nazi and Soviet forces later that year.

Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, lambasted the Polish organizers of Monday’s commemoration, telling them that “your lives, jobs, entertainment, and the very existence of your people, your children have been paid for with the blood of Soviet soldiers who defeated the Third Reich.”

Pro-Ukrainian voices on social media responded by claiming that Ukrainian, not Russian, troops had liberated Auschwitz. The first troops to reach the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination complex were from the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front, a Soviet force comprising soldiers from across the Soviet Union. They freed around 7,000 prisoners from the main camp at Auschwitz, from nearby Birkenau and from a labor camp at Monowitz.

The political struggles of the Middle East have also intruded, with pro-Palestinian activists demanding that Poland arrest members of the Israeli delegation, expected to be led by the education minister, Yoav Kisch, for what they call “genocide” in Gaza. The International Criminal Court last year issued an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

While Mr. Netanyahu was not expected to attend, the Polish government announced this month that all Israeli officials who did come would be safe from arrest.

Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw.