Ceremony commemorates 70th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp

BRZEZINKA, Poland (AP) — A ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau has started in Poland, with leaders and survivors paying tribute to the victims of the death camp.

Some 300 survivors were attending the ceremony alongside world leaders and "Schindler's List" director Steven Spielberg.

President Bronislaw Komorowski spoke Tuesday of the evil inflicted on victims of the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The participants gathered under an enormous tent covering the gate and railroad tracks of Birkenau, a part of the vast Auschwitz-Birkenau complex where victims were transported by train and murdered in gas chambers.

The Germans killed some 1.1 million people at the camp, most of them Jews, but also Gyspsies, homosexuals, Polish political prisoners and others.