Holocaust Survivors To Mark Auschwitz Liberation

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About 300 Holocaust survivors are expected to attend an event marking 70 years since Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz death camp.

They will be joined by world leaders later in remembering the 1.1 million people killed by Nazis at the site, along with the countless others who lost their lives during the conflict.

With all visiting survivors now in their 70s and older, this could be the last major commemoration attended in numbers. In 2005 - the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust - 1,500 victims made the trip to southern Poland.

One 88-year-old Auschwitz survivor - who will sing a memorial prayer during the commemoration - said the Holocaust was "almost impossible for a human mind to comprehend", adding that "he prays to God that we as human beings are able to learn something from it".

Another, Rose Schindler, explained how only 11 of her loved ones survived the Holocaust, out of more than 300 relatives.

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Gallery: Portraits Of Auschwitz Survivors

Auschwitz death camp survivor Jacek Nadolny, 77. Jacek was seven during the Warsaw Uprising, when he was sent with his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau by train

Jacek holds up a wartime photo of his family. In January 1945 the family was moved to a labour camp in Berlin

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Halina Brzozowska, 82. Halina was 12 when her family were sent to a camp in Pruszkow, she and her six-year-old sister were then moved by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau

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Halina said that it was hard to say what had happened to them, that they were taken from their homes, family and lost their childhood

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Laszlo Bernath, 87, credits his father being a practical man with his survival of Auschwitz. He was 15 when they were taken but his father told him to lie about his age so they would not be separated

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Once the 85-year-old arrived at Auschwitz, she was chosen for slave labour and was given no chance to say goodbye to her parents and four siblings.

"I have no graves for my mother, sisters, my brother and my father. So this somehow is a way to say goodbye," she added.

Vladimir Putin will be absent from the main event, amid continuing tensions between Russia and Ukraine. However, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and France's Francois Hollande will attend, along with Germany's Joachim Gauck, for a day of prayer and wreath laying.

Some survivors made an early walk through the death camp to lay a wreath, accompanied by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski.

On the eve of the commemoration, Steven Spielberg spoke to Holocaust survivors in Krakow - warning of "anti-Semites, radical extremists and religious fanatics" who want to propagate hate crimes.

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Gallery: 70th Anniversary Of The Liberation Of Auschwitz Camp

A general view of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim. The Germans built the Auschwitz camp in 1940 as a place of incarceration for the Poles

From 1942, it became the largest site of extermination of the Jews from Europe

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The director of Schindler's List, speaking weeks after four Jews were murdered at a kosher supermarket in Paris, added: "If you are a Jew today – in fact, if you are any person who believes in the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom in free expression - you know that like many other groups, we are once again facing the perennial demons of intolerance."

About 11 million people, mostly Jews but also gipsies, homosexuals and communists, were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Tuesday is also Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain. Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: "This year's Holocaust Memorial Day is of especial significance - marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

"It's a day to honour the Holocaust survivors who are still with us, and to remember the six million Jewish people who were murdered."

David Cameron recalled his own visit to Auschwitz on LBC radio, saying: "You've seen the films, you've read the books, you remember watching The World At War when - in my case - you were a young boy.

"But nothing actually prepares you for the reality of looking at the children's clothes and the suitcases and the human hair and the industrial scale of it all."

Labour leader Ed Miliband told BBC Radio: "It's an emotional day for people who have memories and families involved in this. It's 70 years since my grandfather died in one of the camps.

"When there's prejudice around the world and we see a rise in anti-semitism, it's incredibly important that we keep that memory alive."

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