THE 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army of the Soviet Union was marked today at the site of the former death camp.

Russian representatives were in the past central guests at the anniversary observances in recognition of the Soviet liberation of the camp on January 27 1945, and the millions of Soviets killed by the German Nazis. But they have been excluded since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Kremlin said that Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message to participants saying: “We will always remember that it was the Soviet soldier who crushed this dreadful, total evil and won the victory the greatness of which will forever remain in world history.

“We will continue to counter the attempts to rewrite the legal and moral verdict on the Nazi butchers and their abettors in a principled and firm manner.”

The Nazi German forces murdered some 1.1 million people at the site in southern Poland, which was under German occupation during World War II. 

Most of the victims were Jews killed on an industrial scale in gas chambers, but the Germans also murdered many Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, communists, trade unionists, black and gay people.

Elderly camp survivors were joined at Auschwitz by Polish President Andrzej Duda as commemorations took place across the world.

“We Poles, on whose land — occupied by Nazi Germans at that time — the Germans built this extermination industry and this concentration camp, are today the guardians of memory,” President Duda said to reporters afterward.

In all, the Germans murdered six million Jews from all over Europe, annihilating two-thirds of Europe’s Jews and one-third of all Jews worldwide. 

Later in the day, world leaders such as joined with around 50 elderly camp survivors, the youngest of whom are in their 80s. 

German leaders Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier were also present at the commemoration.