OŚWIĘCIM, Poland — The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum in Poland is preparing for the 80th anniversary of Soviet forces liberating the German Nazi camp in what many experts believe is the memorial's last major milestone with many survivors present.

Silence pervades the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau today. Sometimes the only sounds are the soft footsteps of visitors, people who come from all over the world to mourn and to learn, and the voices of their guides speaking in hushed tones into microphones trying to explain the ungraspable.

Among 34,000 people in the town of Oświęcim is just one Jew – a young Israeli named Hila Weisz-Gut. It’s an interesting choice of residence, given the most famous feature of the town is its proximity to the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz – where at least 1.