White roses placed on a concrete slab of the Holocaust memorial to mark the International Holocaust Memorial Day in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Holocaust survivors, politicians and regular people commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, gathering at somber events across Europe and beyond to reflect on Nazi Germany’s killing of millions of people.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed across each year on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the Nazi German death camps. The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing the day as an annual commemoration.

“The attempt, carried out by Nazi Germany, to erase the Jews from the face of Europe encapsulates, in an emblematic way, all the evil that human beings are capable of committing when they allow themselves to be infected — out of superficiality, indifference, cowardice, or self-interest — by the virus of hatred, racism, and oppression,” Italian President Sergio Mattarella said in a gathering with survivors in Rome.

At Auschwitz, located in an area of southern Poland which was under German occupation during World War II, Polish President Karol Nawrocki joined survivors for a remembrance ceremony that ended with Jewish and Christian clergy reciting prayers.

Bernard Offen, a 96-year-old survivor told participants that in today’s world he sees “signs I know too well.”

“I see hatred resurgent. I see violence beginning to be justified once again,” Offen said. “I see people who believe their anger is more valuable than another human life. I say this because I am an old man who has seen where indifference leads to. And I say this because I believe that — I truly believe — that we can choose differently.”

Nazi German forces killed some 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and others. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945. In all, 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust — in ghettos, concentration camps and shot at close range in the fields and forests of Eastern Europe.

In the heart of Berlin, candles burned at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a field of 2,700 gray concrete slabs which honors the 6 million victims and stands as a powerful symbol of Germany’s remorse.

Other countries are still struggling to come to terms with the complicity of their ancestors. Mattarella condemned the complicity of ordinary Italians in the fascist-era racial laws, which persecuted Italy’s Jewish community, and deportation of its Jews.

As in recent years, Russia representatives were not invited to the observances at Auschwitz due to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.