Survivors and leaders vow 'never again' at Auschwitz ceremony
On Monday morning, Polish President Andrzej Duda, accompanied by Auschwitz survivors, placed wreaths in front of the so-called "Death Wall" - where German SS guards shot and killed several thousand people - and later walked through the infamous "Arbeit macht frei" gate.
Duda later met his Israeli counterpart Reuven Rivlin, thanking him for his presence at the event in Poland, which he said "constitutes a visible sign of memory and protest against inhumane treatment, hate."
"It is our duty to fight anti-Semitism and racism decisively, with determination... and uncompromisingly," Rivlin said during a joint press conference with the Polish president.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier arrived in Poland in the afternoon after meeting Holocaust survivors in the morning in his Berlin residence.
The main commemorative event, including speeches by Duda and four Holocaust survivors, will take place in front of the "Gate of Death" in the Birkenau part of the camp, which led to the largest Nazi extermination centre.
More than 1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Around 900,000 people were killed in gas chambers soon after their arrival at the camp, and their bodies burnt in crematoria.
"We must forge the future of the world based on a profound understanding of what happened more than 75 years ago in the heart of Europe, and what eyewitnesses continue to relate to us," Duda wrote in a statement ahead of the event.
"The truth about the Holocaust must not die... We will not cease in our efforts to make the world remember this crime. So that nothing of the kind would ever happen again," Duda wrote.
Anyone who hears the story of even one survivor "has the responsibility to remember and repeat" it, Poland's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich told dpa. "We are now the memory of the survivors."
Apart from the German and Israeli presidents, representatives of over 50 countries and several international institutions will pay tribute to those who perished in Auschwitz.
Russia, whose Soviet Red Army soldiers liberated the camp on January 27, 1945, will be represented by its ambassador to Poland.
The commemorations take place amid concerns over rising anti-Semitism.
"We cannot wait for anti-Semitism to become 'more serious' to fight it," Schudrich said.
"When you have a small infection on your finger, you do not wait until your entire hand has gangrene to fight the infection. The same is true for anti-Semitism," he said.
