奥斯威辛集中营解放70周年

Some 300 Holocaust survivors returned to Auschwitz on Tuesday for a memorial event at the former site of the Nazi death camp, joined by world leaders including the presidents of Poland, France, Germany, Austria and Ukraine.

They gathered under an enormous tent erected over the camp's gate and railroad tracks, a spot that marked the end of the final journey for more than a million people murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The site is now a museum.

This year's event is expected to be the last major anniversary that a significant number of survivors will be strong enough to attend, given the youngest are now in their 70s.

Making his speech, Auschwitz survivor Roman Kent became emotional as he issued a plea to world leaders to remember the atrocities and fight for tolerance.

"We survivors do not want our past to be our children's future. I hope - I hope and believe that this generation will build on mankind's great traditions tempered by understanding that this tradition must embrace pluralism and tolerance , decency and human rights for all people."

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

Auschwitz has become probably the most poignant symbol of a Holocaust that claimed six million Jewish lives across Europe.

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski told the ceremony the Germans had made Poland a "cemetery for Jews".

"The German occupier made my country a place of exceptional terror and a place of the demise of European Jews. German Nazis have made Poland into an everlasting cemetery of Jews. They have ended centuries of their presence on our land."

The commemoration comes amid a prevailing sense of anxiety over the growing anti-Semitism and radicalism in Europe and the Middle East, as seen in the recent Paris terror attack by Islamist militants that left 17 people dead including four Jews.

President of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder.

"I cannot ignore what is happening today. Jews are targeted in Europe once again, because they are Jews."

Politics also cast a shadow on the event.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was not invited to the ceremony at Auschwitz even though the Soviet Red Army liberated the camp, a move that indicates the deep chill between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

Russia was represented at the ceremony by Putin's chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov.

Anniversary ceremonies also took place in other parts of Europe and at Israel's Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem. For CRI, I'm Qi Zhi.