Leaders Mark Auschwitz Liberation 70 Years On Without Putin

US film director Steven Spielberg leaves after attending the unveiling of a memorial plaque at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015. Some 300 Holocaust survivors traveled to Auschwitz for the 70th anniversary of the death camp's liberation by the Soviet Red Army in 1945, down from 1,500 who attended the event 10 years ago.

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.

he 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.

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