January 27 1945 is the date when the largest Nazi death camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland was liberated by the Red Army.
Danuta Isler reports
January 27 marks also the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the UN General Assembly to commemorate the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust which resulted in the annihilation of 6 million European Jews and others by the Nazi German regime.
Auschwitz, which is the German name for the southern Polish town of Oswiecim, was a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated in occupied Poland by Nazi Germany during WWII. It consisted of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and 45 satellite camps. According to various historians' estimates, at least one million one hundred thousand perished there, mostly Jews, but also thousands of Poles and many Roma people.
Over 150 former prisoners, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek, among others are in attendance of today's 65th anniversary ceremony at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.