Last survivors remember 1.5m killed at Auschwitz

World leaders joined around 300 Auschwitz survivors at the site of the former Nazi death camp to mark 70 years since its liberation by Soviet troops, an anniversary held in the shadow of conflict in Ukraine and the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe.

The gathering in southern Poland marks perhaps the last major anniversary that survivors of the camp will be able to attend in numbers, given the youngest are now in their 70s. Some 1,500 survivors attended the 60th anniversary.

Around 1.5m people, mainly European Jews, were gassed, shot, hanged, and burned at the camp in during the Second World War before the Red Army entered its gates in winter 1945. Auschwitz, some 60km west of Krakow, has become the most poignant symbol of the Holocaust, which claimed 6m Jewish lives across Europe.