At Auschwitz in Poland, a ceremony has been held to mark the anniversary of the camp's liberation by the Soviet Red Army 65 years ago. The ceremony was attended by Holocaust survivors, Soviet army veterans, Polish President Lech Kaczynski, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Polish and Israeli Prime Ministers Donald Tusk and Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a keynote address at the commemoration, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that "never again shall we allow evil to hurt our people". Earlier, the Israeli leader told reporters that the Jewish people were now prepared for any new threat to destroy them. His comments were widely perceived as referring to Iran, although it was not mentioned by name.

In an ecumenical service that followed, Tel Aviv's Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau - a Polish-born Holocaust orphan - intoned the Kaddish, or Jewish prayer of mourning, his breath visible in the freezing air. Participants then lit candles at the foot of a monument to the camp's victims as a Polish army bugler played a memorial air. For the majority of the 100 aging Auschwitz survivors, it was likely the last opportunity to visit the site.

An estimated 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, almost one million of them Jews. Most of the victims died in gas chambers, but also from shooting, hanging, starvation, disease, slave labour and pseudo-medical experiments. About 75,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet POWs and thousands of resistance members also perished at the camp.

In the Dutch camp at Westerbork, the last names of the 102,000 Dutch people who died in camps at the hands of the Nazis were read aloud just before the Auschwitz ceremony began. The names were read out continuously for 112 hours by 700 volunteers.

Auschwitz photo by vmramos (Flickr)