Auschwitz 70th Anniversary: Death Camp Survivors Warn Against New Threats

Over 300 Auschwitz survivors and world leaders recently gathered at the death camp's site in Poland to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the nazi concentration camp's liberation.

During WWII, around 1.5 million people, mainly European Jews, were brutally beaten, tortured and killed at the camp in southern Poland before the Russian Army entered its gates in winter 1945, signaling an end to the devastating war.  

The presidents of Poland, Germany, and France on Tuesday  joined the remaining survivors, all in their 80's and 90's, in a giant tent erected over the brickwork entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, part of the complex that is now a museum.

The president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald S Lauder, urged the world not to repeat the crimes committed at Auschwitz, telling the commemoration: "Jews are targeted in Europe once again because they are Jews...Once again young Jewish boys are afraid to wear yarmulkes [skullcaps] on the streets of Paris, Budapest, London and even Berlin."

One 88-year-old Auschwitz survivor - who sang a memorial prayer during the commemoration - said the Holocaust was "almost impossible for a human mind to comprehend", adding that he "prays to God that we as human beings are able to learn something from it".

Another survivor, 81 year old Paula Lebovics, told the AP that she remembered how as a small, hungry girl of 11 she was lifted up by a Russian soldier who rocked her in his arms as tears came to his eyes.

Although she does not know who the soldier was, she still felt immense gratitude to him and the other Soviet soldiers, Ms Lebovics said, adding: "They were our liberators."

The anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation comes just three weeks after Islamist gunmen killed 17 people in attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly newspaper and a kosher supermarket in Paris.