It has been 70 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Many of the survivors were back at the former camp today for an official commemoration. Washington D.C. reporter Geoff Bennett filed this report.
A dwindling number of Auschwitz survivors returned to the site of the Nazi death camp in southern Poland Tuesday to mark 70 years since its liberation.
Organizers expect Tuesday’s commemoration to be the last time a large group of survivors — more than 300 – will be able to gather.
During the early 1940s, Nazis slaughtered an estimated 1.1 million people behind the massive walls of Auschwitz. A million of the victims were Jews.
Many of those still alive today were children when Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945. They were witnesses to one of the twentieth century's worst acts of inhumanity, evil and hatred.
"'They took away my family, they took away my sister, they took away everything that I had - just because I was Jewish," said Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Johnny Pekats.
In all, about six million Jews and millions of others died in the Holocaust. The exact numbers of dead will probably never be known.
In a statement, the White House said of Tuesday’s anniversary: “Today we come together and commit, to the millions of murdered souls and all survivors, that it must never happen again.”