By Sherylin McMurtrey
BRZEZINKA, Poland ?
Barbed wire and brick barracks stretched as far as the eye could see. The ruined crematoriums loomed nearby, all covered with a blanket of fresh snow.
World leaders and Auschwitz survivors gathered together in the solemn winter cold on the 60th anniversary of the Nazi death camp Thursday to remember the more than 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust.
The ceremony took place on the spot where the train would drop off new camp arrivals to be sorted. The few deemed able to work were separated from the rest who were taken immediately to the gas chambers.
?It seems if you listen hard enough, you can still hear the outcry of horror of the murdered people,? Israeli President Moshe Katsav said to the Associated Press. ?When I walk the ground of the concentration camps, I fear that I am walking on the ashes of the victims.?
Vice President Dick Cheney and Presidents Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Jacques Chirac of France joined in the commemoration. In recognition of his country?s responsibility for the HolocauseGerman President Horst Koehler sat on the platform without speaking in recognition of his country?s responsibility for the Holocaust.
?For a former inmate of Auschwitz, it is an unimaginable and overwhelming emotion to be able to speak in this cemetery without graves, the largest one in the history of Europe,? said Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a survivor who later became Poland?s foreign minister.
When he arrived at Auschwitz in 1940, he recalled, ?I never imagined I would outlive Hitler or survive World War II.?
?We think of the suffering of our brothers, of the special ties that link us, Poles, with the Jewish nation,? Kwasniewski said.
Putin put the Nazis in the same category as today?s terrorists.
?Today we shall not only remember the past but also be aware of all the threats of the modern world,? Putin said, according to the Associated Press. ?Terrorism is among them, and it is no less dangerous and cunning that fascism.?
As the leaders left the memorial services they placed candles in blue glass holders to remember those who lost their lives and to celebrate those who were still alive.
Earlier in Krakow, Cheney noted the holocaust took place in a central point of the civilized world, not in some far-off place.
?The story of the camps shows that evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted,? he said.
Putin?s acknowledging statements that anti-Semitism and xenophobia had started in Russia met with long applause as his comments addressed an issue the Kremlin had long failed to confront directly. He said many people in the world should be ashamed of new manifestations of anti-Semitism since the defeat of fascism six decades earlier.
?Even in our country, in Russia, which did more than any to combat fascism ? we sometimes unfortunately see manifestations of this problem and I, too, am ashamed of that,? Putin said.
An Auschwitz survivor from Krakow, Franciszek Jozefiak, 80, said efforts to educate new generations about the horrors of the holocaust should be intensified.
?Today I?m remembering my father, gassed here. I?m remembering the atrocious things they did to us here,? Jozefiak said. ?I drank water from a dirty pool and, to punish me, an SS man jumped on my arm and broke it and jumped on my chest and broke two ribs.?
He said the Nazi guards lined them up one day and told some prisoners to go right and other to go left. Jozefiak and his father separated when he went left and his father went right, to the gas chamber.
?The message today is: No more Auschwitz,? Jozefiak said. ?But the world had learned nothing so far ? you see they are fighting and killing each other everywhere in the world.
?Today they are saying a lot of the anniversary, but tomorrow they will forget,? he cautioned.
Members of the European Parliament in Brussels observed a moment of silence to honor the anniversary.
Earlier, participants at a youth forum in Krakow applauded several surviving Soviet soldiers awarded for liberating the camp, and viewed a video message from 92-year-old Maj. Anatoly Shapiro, who commanded the Soviet unit that captured Auschwitz. He was too sick to make the trip from his home in New York.
?I would like to say to all the people on the earth: Unite, and do not permit this evil that was committed,? Shapiro said in the recorded greeting, according to the Associated Press. ?This should never be repeated, ever.?