World leaders to attend 70th anniversary ceremonies in Poland
波蘭舉行奧斯威辛集中營解放70周年紀念活動

Tuesday marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Traveling to Poland from all corners of the world, survivors of the concentration camp will gather alongside world leaders to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi program of industrial genocide.

European heads of state, including French president Francois Hollande and Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko, will gather at the former concentration camp, near Krakow in southern Poland. Representatives from Russia, the United States and Israel will also attend the event.

On Monday German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke at a ceremony in Berlin and said the anniversary can remind people that the concentration camp was a "warning of what people can do to one another".

"Auschwitz is a warning of what people can do to one another. Auschwitz is a terrible caesura in the history of humanity. Auschwitz stands for the break in civilisation committed by Germany, the Shoah. This is what gives the day that the concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated its particular meaning," Merkel said.

"There we saw two of the greatest evils of our time: Islamist terrorism and anti-Semitism. A few days after the attacks millions of people came together in Paris to send a decisive message: we want to live together freely and peacefully. Together we act against barbarism inspired by hatred of people. Whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, with or without religion, we belong together."