Remembering Auschwitz - a tragedy for all mankind

AS candles flickered in the snowy, winter gloom, world leaders and Auschwitz survivors yesterday remembered victims of the Holocaust on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.

The ceremony, which opened with the recorded rumble of an approaching train, was held on the spot where new arrivals were brought in by rail to the vast camp and put through "selection" - meaning those few who were deemed able to work were separated from the rest who were taken immediately to the gas chambers.

"It seems if you listen hard enough, you can still hear the outcry of horror of the murdered people," Israeli President Moshe Katsav said. "When I walk the ground of the concentration camps, I fear that I am walking on the ashes of the victims."