Tuesday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the passage of 70 years since the January 27, 1945, liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet soldiers. Auschwitz was a network of concentration camps built and operated in occupied Poland by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Auschwitz I and nearby Auschwitz II-Birkenau were the extermination camps where an estimated 1.1 million people—mostly Jews from across Europe, but also political opponents, prisoners of war, homosexuals, and Roma—were killed in gas chambers or by systematic starvation, forced labor, disease, or medical experiments. About 200,000 camp inmates survived the ordeal. On Tuesday, a number of heads of states and aging survivors will attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary at the site in Poland, now maintained as a museum and memorial.
The infamous German inscription that reads 'Work Will
Set You Free' at the main gate of the Auschwitz I extermination camp on
November 15, 2014 in Oswiecim, Poland.
# Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
The 'long walk' leads to the gas chambers, a path taken
by prisoners who were immediately selected for death after arriving by
train at the Auschwitz II Birkenau extermination camp, on November 13,
2014 in Oswiecim, Poland
#Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Autumn leaves carpet 'The Little Wood' where prisoners
were held waiting to enter the gas chambers at the Auschwitz II Birkenau
extermination camp on November 12, 2014 in Oswiecim, Poland.
# Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
A watchtower and a barbed-wire fence are pictured at the
memorial site of the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau
in Oswiecim, Poland, on January 25, 2015.
#
Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images
The railway track leading to the infamous 'Death Gate'
at the Auschwitz II Birkenau extermination camp on November 13, 2014 in
Oswiecim, Poland
# Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
The original security lights illuminate the barbed wire
perimeter fence of the Auschwitz I extermination camp on November 13,
2014 in Oswiecim, Poland.
# Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
A watch tower nestles among birch trees at the Auschwitz
II Birkenau extermination camp on November 14, 2014 in Oswiecim,
Poland.
# Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
German Chancellor Angela Merkel stands in front of an
historic picture of the Auschwitz concentration camp as she gives a
speech during the International Auschwitz Committees remembrance
ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi
death camp on January 26, 2015 in Berlin. The International Auschwitz
Committee (IAC) was founded by survivors of the Auschwitz concentration
camp aiming to let the world know what happened in the concentration and
extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and to look after the interests
of the survivors.
# Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images
U.S. survivor Jack Rosenthal shows his prisoner number
tattooed on his arm as he visits the former Auschwitz concentration camp
in Oswiecim on January 26, 2015.
# Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images
From left: 79-year-old Miriam Ziegler, 81-year-old Paula
Lebovics, 85-year-old Gabor Hirsch and 80-year-old Eva Kor pose with
the original image of them as children taken at Auschwitz at the time of
its liberation on January 26, 2015 in Krakow, Poland.
# Ian Gavan/Getty Images
Ihor Malicky, a survivor of Auschwitz, walks through the
former concentration camp, now a museum, on January 26, 2015 in
Oswiecim, Poland.
# Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Auschwitz death camp survivor Danuta Bogdaniuk-Bogucka
(maiden name Kaminska), 80, poses for a portrait in Warsaw on January 5,
2015. Bogdaniuk-Bogucka was 10 years old when she was sent to
Auschwitz-Birkenau camp with her mother. Bogdaniuk-Bogucka was part of
Josef Mengele's experiments when she was in Auschwitz. After the war she
met her mother again and they discovered they had both been at
Ravensbruck camp at the same time, but they had not realized this. As
the liberation of Auschwitz approaches its 70th anniversary this month,
Reuters photographers took portraits of now elderly survivors.
# Kacper Pempel/Reuters
Auschwitz death camp survivor Jadwiga Bogucka (maiden
name Regulska), 89, registered with camp number 86356, holds a picture
of herself from 1944 in Warsaw on January 12, 2015.
# Kacper Pempel/Reuters
Auschwitz death camp survivor Jadwiga Bogucka (maiden
name Regulska), 89, who was registered with camp number 86356, poses for
a portrait in Warsaw on January 12, 2015. During the Warsaw Uprising in
August, 1944, when Bogucka was 19, she and her mother were sent from
their house to a camp in Pruszkow and then moved on August 12, 1944 by
train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were liberated by the Red Army on
January 27, 1945.
# Kacper Pempel/Reuters
Auschwitz death camp survivor Laszlo Bernath, 87, holds
up a picture of his family, who were all killed in the concentration
camp during World War Two, in Budapest on January 12, 2015. Bernath
credits his father being a practical man with his survival of Auschwitz.
He was 15 when they were taken but his father told him to lie about his
age so that they would not be separated. Even while in the camp,
Bernath had no idea about the gas chambers.
# Laszlo Balogh/Reuters
Auschwitz death Camp survivor Jacek Nadolny, 77, who was
registered with camp number 192685, poses for a portrait in Warsaw on
January 7, 2015. Nadolny was seven during the Warsaw Uprising, when he
was sent with his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau by train. In January
1945, the family was moved to a labor camp in Berlin.
# Kacper Pempel/Reuters
90-year-old Holocaust survivor Hy Abrams points at the
word "Auschwitz" as he poses for a photo with a book that he carries
with him everyday that documents all the different concentration camps
he was held in during the second World War, in the Brooklyn borough of
New York on January 15, 2015. In a little leather book, the kind some
men use to list lovers, Holocaust survivor Abrams keeps the names that
still haunt him: Auschwitz, Plaszow, Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee. It
has been 70 years since the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz
concentration camp in Poland, where Abrams was taken at age 20 by German
Nazi soldiers and separated from his mother, father, brother and three
sisters.
# Carlo Allegri/Reuters
An Israeli teenager views the barbed wire fencing that
was once electrified at the Auschwitz I extermination camp on November
13, 2014 in Oswiecim, Poland.
# Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Photos of Auschwitz inmates hang on a wall at the former
concentration camp, today a museum, on January 25, 2015 in Oswiecim,
Poland.
# Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Wooden bunks inside a destroyed barracks at the former
German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau near
Oswiecim, Poland on January 19, 2015.
# Pawel Ulatowski/Reuters
A small selection of the personal photographs taken from
prisoners as they arrived at the Auschwitz II Birkenau extermination
camp are displayed on November 12, 2014 in Oswiecim, Poland.
# Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Thousands of eyeglasses that belonged to people brought
to Auschwitz for extermination, displayed at the former German Nazi
concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland on
January 19, 2015.
# Pawel Ulatowski/Reuters
Children's shoes confiscated from Auschwitz prisoners
lie in an exhibition display at the former Auschwitz I concentration
camp, now a museum, on January 25, 2015 in Oswiecim, Poland.
# Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Empty canisters of Zyklon B, the poison gas used to kill
prisoners, displayed at the former German Nazi concentration and
extermination camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland on January 19, 2015.
# Pawel Ulatowski/Reuters
Visiting children look at an exhibit of shoes that
belonged to child prisoners at the former Auschwitz I concentration camp
on January 25, 2015 in Oswiecim, Poland.
#
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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