WARSAW, Poland (AP) \u2014 Holocaust survivors, politicians and regular people commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, gathering at somber events across Europe and beyond to reflect on Nazi Germany\u2019s killing of millions of people.<\/p>\n
International Holocaust Remembrance Day<\/a> is observed across each year on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the Nazi German death camps. The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing the day as an annual commemoration<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe attempt, carried out by Nazi Germany, to erase the Jews from the face of Europe encapsulates, in an emblematic way, all the evil that human beings are capable of committing when they allow themselves to be infected \u2014 out of superficiality, indifference, cowardice, or self-interest \u2014 by the virus of hatred, racism, and oppression,\u201d Italian President Sergio Mattarella said in a gathering with survivors in Rome.<\/p>\n At Auschwitz, located in an area of southern Poland which was under German occupation during World War II, Polish President Karol Nawrocki joined survivors for a remembrance ceremony that ended with Jewish and Christian clergy reciting prayers.<\/p>\n Bernard Offen, a 96-year-old survivor told participants that in today\u2019s world he sees \u201csigns I know too well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI see hatred resurgent. I see violence beginning to be justified once again,\u201d Offen said. \u201cI see people who believe their anger is more valuable than another human life. I say this because I am an old man who has seen where indifference leads to. And I say this because I believe that \u2014 I truly believe \u2014 that we can choose differently.\u201d<\/p>\n Nazi German forces killed some 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and others. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945. In all, 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust \u2014 in ghettos, concentration camps and shot at close range in the fields and forests of Eastern Europe<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the heart of Berlin, candles burned at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a field of 2,700 gray concrete slabs which honors the 6 million victims and stands as a powerful symbol of Germany\u2019s remorse.<\/p>\n Other countries are still struggling to come to terms with the complicity of their ancestors. Mattarella condemned the complicity of ordinary Italians in the fascist-era racial laws, which persecuted Italy\u2019s Jewish community, and deportation of its Jews.<\/p>\n As in recent years, Russia representatives were not invited to the observances at Auschwitz due to the country\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n \u2018Become my witness\u2019<\/p>\n Pavel Jelinek, a 90-year-old survivor from the city of Liberec \u2014 a Czech city with a prewar Jewish population of 1,350 \u2014 told those gathered in the upper house of the Czech Parliament that he was now the last living of the 37 Jews who returned to the city after the war.<\/p>\n