Berlin - Europe on Sunday remembered the atrocities and horror of three concentration camps run by the Nazis and their allies during the Second World War with ceremonies in Germany, Croatia and France.
At the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, the president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, recalled the shock of the first images to emerge from the camp when it was liberated 70 years ago.
"We saw the bulldozers pushing naked bodies into open pits. The walking skeletons. The unbelievable sadness and loss," he said at a ceremony attended by around 70 survivors.
The sombre and emotional scenes were mirrored at Jasenovac in Croatia, where families, officials and diplomats gathered to remember the liberation of a concentration camp where tens of thousands were tortured and brutally murdered.
In France, President Francois Hollande warned that the continued existence of racism and anti-Semitism meant "the worst could yet return" as he led commemorations at Struthof in the Alsace region, site of the only Nazi camp on French soil.
More than 50,000 deportees from across Europe lost their lives at the Bergen-Belsen camp in western Germany between 1941 and 1945, including the young Jewish diarist Anne Frank, in addition to 20,000 prisoners of war.
German President Joachim Gauck paid tribute to the British soldiers who freed the camp and restored "humanity" to the country.
"With their actions and their approach, driven by humanity, a new epoch began. People, the former 'master race', would see that human sympathy can indeed be learned," said Gauck.
"As such, they were the shining counter-example to the advancing Germans who in the years before conquered, subjugated, enslaved and plundered Europe."
AFP
