UPDATE: World marks 77 years since liberation of Auschwitz

Holocaust survivors and officials attended a ceremony in southern Poland on Thursday to mark the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Holocaust survivors and officials attended a ceremony in southern Poland on Thursday to mark the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Photo: PAP/Zbigniew Meissner

January 27 marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day as proclaimed by the United Nations in 2015.

The ceremony at the site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was a low-key and predominantly online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watch LIVE from @AuschwitzMuseum. The 77th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. #Auschwitz77 https://t.co/hNp09O0k51

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 27, 2022

French Prime Minister Jean Castex and a group of foreign diplomats posted in Poland attended in person, together with 20 surviving former prisoners.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex attends Thursday's ceremony in southern Poland to honour Holocaust victims. Photo: PAP/Zbigniew Meissner

The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp operated in German-occupied southern Poland between May 1940 and January 1945. It was the largest of the German Nazi concentration and death camps during World War II.

More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, as well as Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and people of many other nationalities, perished there before the camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945.

Agnieszka Bielawska has this report.

Click on the audio player above to listen.