Survivors ask the world to remember victims of Nazi death camps

A single train whistle, evoking memories of the trains that brought more than a million Jews to their deaths, signalled the start of the official ceremony to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The recording of the whistle sent a chill into those already struggling with the frigid cold and snow. Many of those gathered for the remembrance ceremony were survivors of the Nazi death camps who knew the sound of the train's arrival all too well.

"The date of 27 January, 1945, put an end to the existence of Hitler's creation of the camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in which one of the greatest crimes against humanity was committed. This place created hatred and cruelty. It was here that through a sick ideology, humans made other humans suffer the most horrendous fate possible," said Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

More than 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, or of disease, starvation, abuse and exhaustion.

Six million Jews died in the Nazi camps, along with millions of others, including Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled and political opponents of the Nazis.

Seated between the ruins of the chambers the Nazis used to gas and burn their victims, Poland's culture minister reminded those who had congregated for the solemn ceremony that they were inside the world's largest cemetery. "A cemetery where there are no graves, no stones. But there are ashes of more than one million and a half human beings."

The vast killing fields were the backdrop for a ceremony filled with sadness, regret and even anger.

"Even today, more than 60 years after the Holocaust, we find it hard to believe that in the 20th century the world kept quiet as the Jewish people were exterminated. The Allies fought the Germans with enormous powers, and we are grateful for that, and we will always be grateful. But they did not do enough to stop the Holocaust, to stop the extermination of the Jewish people," said Israeli President Moshe Katsav.

But at the heart of the remembrance ceremony were the survivors.

Sixty years on, most say it is the last time they will be here to bear witness.

Vladislaw Bartoszewski, prisoner number 4427, survived Auschwitz and later served as Poland's foreign minister. He had harsh words for those nations that failed to stop the the killing sooner.

"The free world was not interested in our suffering, nor in our death," he said, "in spite of the efforts of the Resistance to get word to the outside world."

Simone Veil, prisoner number 78651, later became a minister in the government of France. Hers was a lament for a generation lost: children who would never become philosophers, artists, scientists or mothers.

"All I know," said Veil, "is that I cry whenever I think about them and I will never forget them."

A cantor's prayer for those who died could not quell the anger of one survivor, who jumped to the podium unannounced, tears falling from her eyes. "Here they took my name away and gave me a number," she said yanking up her sleeve to expose her tattooed arm. "Why, why did they burn my Jewish nation? Why did they take our freedom?"

German President Horst Koehler sat on the platform without speaking: recognition of Germany's responsibility for the Holocaust.

With the darkness came the lighting of candles by survivors and heads of state, a growing nest of flickering lights against the night.

The railway tracks of Auschwitz were burned at the end of the ceremony, an exorcism of a tortured past. They became a pathway of fire that remained alight as the mourners departed and a burning reminder of how much was lost 60 years ago, something survivors hope the world will never forget.

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel summed up what many hoped would be the result of the day's moving ceremony. "If you, after this day, will be the same, then we have lost. An encounter with this memory, which now you are the custodians of, must do something to you and through you, the whole world."