Thousands took part in the 35th International March of the Living

This year, 42 Holocaust survivors joined the International March of the Living. "I know it is inevitable and a time will come when there will be no survivors", said Mala Tribich, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. "And that's why all the more I'm making the effort to be here while I can."

Another survivor, David Schaecter, said he survived "not because I'm special, not because I'm a genius - I survived because I had a brother called Jakob".

Jakob, who was four years older than Schaecter, suffered many punishments intended for his younger brother to protect him. Both brothers were imprisoned for three years in Auschwitz and subsequently the Buchenwald camp, according to past interviews Schaecter has given.

More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in the gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz, which the Nazis set up in occupied Poland during World War Two.

This year's event also commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when armed Jews, among hundreds of thousands crowded into a small area of the Polish capital, struck back against the Nazi occupiers.

"This year, on Holocaust Remembrance Day we salute Jewish heroism in the Holocaust and the miracle of a human spirit as we commemorate 80 years since the courageous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising", said a consultant of the event, Greg Masel.

"The International March of the Living is an annual educational program, bringing individuals from around the world to Poland and Israel to study the history of the Holocaust and to examine the roots of prejudice, intolerance and hatred," we read at the official website of the March.

"Since its inception in 1988, more than 300,000 alumni from 50 countries have marched down the same 3-kilometer path leading from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day – Yom Hashoah – as a tribute to all victims of the Holocaust."