HOLOCAUST

Jewish youths march in remembrance of Auschwitz victims

Thousands of people have joined a remembrance march through the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz on Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day. More than 1.1 million people were murdered there during World War II.

Several thousand young Israelis waving their nation's flag took part in the annual three-kilometer (two-mile) "March of the Living" at Auschwitz on Thursday, just over 70 years after the Nazi camp was liberated.

The march, held on Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day, is a symbolic trek from Auschwitz to Birkenau - the two sections of the biggest death camp complex, located in the south of then-occupied Poland.

More than 1.1 million Jews, Roma, gypsies and others were gassed to death at the vast site, before it was liberated by Red Army soldiers on January 27, 1945. There were about 7,000 survivors.

Christoph Heubner of the International Auschwitz Committee told German news agency DPA that this year's march had taken on a greater significance following recent attacks on Jewish targets in Paris and Copenhagen.

"To be again confronted in old age with the deadly hatred of anti-Semitism has deeply shaken the survivors," Heubner said.