Survivors and heads of state reminded the world of the extent of the killing during the second World War, reports Daniel McLaughlin at Auschwitz.
More than 30 heads of state joined survivors of Auschwitz yesterday to mark 60 years since the Red Army liberated the Nazi death camp.
In a snow-swept ceremony of remembrance for the 1.5 million people who died here, the leaders of Poland, Israel and Russia led calls for the world to learn the lessons of the Holocaust by intensifying efforts to crush prejudice and prevent genocide.
About 1,000 survivors, some wearing their prisoners' blue-and-white striped caps, huddled under swirling snow as a mournful whistle began the ceremony, evoking the trains that brought Jews from across Europe to this vast camp in southern Poland.
Former Polish foreign minister Mr Wladyslaw Bartoszewski - Auschwitz prisoner number 4427 - reminded the world that some three million Catholic Poles died in the Holocaust alongside six million Jews and about three million others, including persecuted groups like Gypsies and homosexuals.
"Back in September 1940 when I first stood on the assembly ground in Auschwitz, in a crowd of 5,500 other Poles, I never imagined I would outlive Hitler or survive World War II," said Mr Bartoszewski (82).
"In the first 15 months of existence of this awful place, we, the Polish inmates, were all alone. The free world was not interested in our suffering or in our death."
Echoing widespread Jewish criticism of the Allies' response to the Holocaust, he continued: "In 1942 the governments of the United Kingdom and United States were well informed of what was going on in Auschwitz-Birkenau," he said, using the full name of the camp that was extended in 1941 to allow for more gas chambers and crematoria.
"None of the countries reacted adequately to the gravity of the problem to stop the Germans committing mass murder. Perhaps half a million victims could have been saved."
Israeli President Moshe Katsav also accused the Allies of "not doing enough to stop the Holocaust" and warned the world of a resurgence of anti-Semitism.
"We fear anti-Semitism. We fear Holocaust denial, we fear a distorted approach by the youth of Europe. We call upon the European Union - do not let Naziism dwell in the imaginations of the young generations as a 'horror show', so to speak." Calling Auschwitz the "biggest burial ground of the Jewish people the capital of an empire of death", Mr Katsav said events here and at the other Nazi-built death camps in Poland had inspired Jews to create the state of Israel.
"Just three hours' flight from here we have established our own land, but not soon enough to save those that are buried here," Mr Katsav said, as people waved Jewish flags in the gathering darkness. "We have built a modern, developed, democratic state."
Mr Romani Rose, the leader of Germany's leading Gypsy organisation, the Central Council of Sinti and Roma, reminded the world that Auschwitz was synonymous with the state-organised genocide of half a million gypsies in Nazi-occupied Europe.
"Thousands of Sinti and Roma were deported here from the Third Reich and from almost all Nazi-occupied European countries. They were subjected to humiliation, torture and brutally murdered," he said.
At a ceremony in the nearby city of Krakow earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw three veterans of the Red Army awarded medals of honour by his Polish counterpart, Mr Alexander Kwasniewski.
"The first to witness these bestial crimes were Soviet soldiers," Mr Putin said. "They are the ones who turned off the ovens at Auschwitz and Birkenau.
"I pay tribute to the 600,000 Red Army troops that gave their lives for Poland's liberation and the 27 million Soviet citizens who died for victory," he continued, speaking of the huge losses that Soviet leaders often quoted to challenge claims that Jews were the greatest victims of Nazi brutality.
Annoyed by western criticism of his hardline policy against Chechnya's separatist rebels, Mr Putin used the occasion to make a political point to his detractors.
"Just as there were no 'good' and 'bad' fascists, there cannot be 'good' and 'bad' terrorists: any double standards here are absolutely unacceptable and deadly for civilisation," said Mr Putin, dressed in black for the event.
Speaking earlier in Krakow, he urged unity against the threat of international terror: "Terrorists, like the Nazis, exterminated people. I am convinced that our civilisation can be saved if we unite against our common enemy."
Under pressure from Jewish groups to act against widespread anti-Semitism at home, Mr Putin also admitted that, even in Russia, "which did the most to defeat fascism, to liberate Jews, we see frequent signs of this disease and are embarrassed by it".
Pope John Paul II sent a message to the Auschwitz memorial, saying that the Nazi bid to exterminate the Jewish people had left a "shadow on the history of Europe".
Ukraine's new President, Mr Viktor Yushchenko, said his first major event as leader of his country was coloured by his father's imprisonment in the camp.
"My father was a wounded soldier and he was in Auschwitz. He had 11367 tattooed on his chest. I came here with my children and I hope I will come here with my grandchildren. This is a sacred place for me and my family.
"There will never again be a Jewish question in my country. The tragedy of the past will never be repeated on the soil of Ukraine."
Germany's President, Mr Horst Koehler, called the Holocaust "the greatest crime of humanity", and something that had indelibly marked his country's conscience.
"We have the duty to ensure that something like this never happens again - and we Germans in particular." The sombre ceremony culminated in two streams of fire rippling down the railtracks that led into Auschwitz, through a gate adorned with the macabre lie: "Work Brings Freedom".
Diplomatic protocol was broken only for a moment when, giving vent to her grief and fury, one survivor unexpectedly mounted the dais to deliver her own fiery address.
"My whole family was killed here. They took my name, gave me a number, reduced me to nothing," she screamed. "Why did they want to burn my people?" Wearing only a white sweater against the bitter cold, the woman, later identified as Ms Merka Shevach, seized the microphone, ripped back her sleeve and showed the number tattooed on her arm. "I was here, stark naked, on this site when I was 16!" she shouted in defiant Polish. "Now I am Israeli, I have a country, I have a flag. I have a president. I am still alive, standing here today!"