World remembers Holocaust as antisemitism rises amid pandemic

Nazi forces killed 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and others, and the site today stands as a powerful symbol of how hatred and indifference led to the Holocaust.

The entry to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, with snow-covered rail tracks leading to the camp. File Picture: AP/PA

Survivors have recalled their agony to a world they fear is forgetting, Israel’s parliamentary speaker wept in the German parliament and politicians warned of a resurgence of antisemitism on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The day falls on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps where Nazi Germany carried out its Final Solution seeking to murder the Jewish people of Europe.