Holocaust victims honored 71 years after Auschwitz liberated

A man enters the Sachsenhausen Nazi death camp through the gate with the phrase ‘Arbeit macht frei’ (work sets you free) at the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in Oranienburg, about 30 kilometers, (18 miles) north of Berlin, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp on Jan. 27, 1945. AP

WARSAW, Poland— Dozens of elderly Holocaust survivors lit candles at Auschwitz exactly 71 years after the Soviet army liberated the death camp which has become the most powerful symbol of the human suffering inflicted by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Events Wednesday at the former death camp in southern Poland came as world leaders and others across the world mark the U.N.-designated International Remembrance Day.

The event come amid warnings of a resurgence of anti-Semitism casting a shadow over a new generation of European Jews, driving some to leave the continent.

Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s top foreign affairs representative, said in a statement: “We must be honest enough to admit that more than 70 years after the Shoah, anti-Semitism is still alive in our ‘civilized’ European Union.”