Remembering one of history's biggest horrors

Warsaw, Poland

MORE than 3,000 guests, including Holocaust survivors and foreign dignitaries, gathered on Tuesday at a site marking one of history's biggest horrors, the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in southern Poland, which were liberated by Soviet troops 70 years ago in closing months of World War II.

Because of the survivors' advancing age, this year's ceremony at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum may be the last major anniversary memorial to include more than a handful of people who endured the Nazi camps here, where about 1.5 million people lost their lives, most of them European Jews. Some 1,500 survivors attended the 60th anniversary in 2005, but Tuesday there were fewer than 300 on hand. Most are in their 90s, and some are older than 100.