German, Polish Presidents At Auschwitz For Holocaust Commemorations

German, Polish Leaders Honor Holocaust Victims

German President Christian Wulff and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski joined survivors at the site of the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp in Poland today for Holocaust commemorations.

The international Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 marks the day Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1945.

In Berlin, the German parliament convened for a special session commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

For the first time, a Roma man addressed the body, reminding lawmakers of what he called the "forgotten Holocaust" of hundreds of thousands of his own people.

Dutch-born Holocaust survivor Zoni Weisz, 73, said discrimination and exclusion of Roma in some Western European countries showed that Europe had still failed to learn crucial lessons from the Nazi era.

compiled from agency reports