Today marks the 70th anniversary of the first rail convoy of prisoners to the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz.

Train arrived from the southern town of Tarnów and numbered 728 political prisoners, mostly Poles. 239 of them who miraculously survived the war.

A special memorial train, retracing the 140-kilometre route of seventy years ago, arrived at Auschwitz earlier today for commemoration ceremonies. Among those travelling on the train were Kazimierz Zając, one of the handful of survivors of the first transport, former Auschwitz prisoner Jerzy Ulatowski and around 500 pupils from Tarnów schools. They attended an open-air mass was celebrated close to the Death Wall at the camp site.

A total of 1.1 million people perished at Auschwitz. One million were Jews from Poland and many European countries, Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and some 15, 000 people of other nationalities.  (mk)