Auschwitz Survivors Mark 70th Anniversary of Liberation(Jan 17,1945-Jan 27,2015)Tuesday Jan 27,2015

Auschwitz survivors have urged the world not to allow a repeat of the crimes of the Holocaust as they mark 70 years since the camp's liberation.

"We survivors do not want our past to be our children's future," Roman Kent, born in 1929, told a memorial gathering at the death camp's site in Poland.

Some 300 Auschwitz survivors returned for the ceremony under a giant tent.

 

Candles have been lit at the Death Wall where prisoners were executed - small points of light in this wintry landscape of snow and ice, where Europe is remembering a time of darkness

Those who survived Auschwitz lived through one of the 20th Century's worst acts of hatred and inhumanity. Many of those still alive today were children in 1945 but they are elderly now and this may be the last significant anniversary where so many will gather.

 Director Steven Spielberg, who made the Holocaust film Schindler's List, was at the ceremony at Auschwitz

The Netherlands' King Wilem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and Prime Minister Mark Rutte stand before a memorial plaque

Note
Some 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed there between 1940 and 1945, when Soviet troops liberated it.

Auschwitz was liberated on 27 January 1945. It opened as a museum in 1947.
Anniversary ceremonies took place in other parts of Europe and at Israel's Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem.