Preservation efforts in Poland are currently underway to ensure the protection of the decaying Auschwitz-Birkenau site and its victims' memories.

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Born into a poor family in Salonika, Greece, Shlomo Venezia was arrested at the age of 21, in March 1944, and deported with his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau where he lost his mother and two sisters.

UNESCO: MEDIA SERVICES

Poland was the site of some of the most notorious Nazi German death camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Sobibor.

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The date is of course significant as it was on this day in 1945 that the Auschwitz Birkenau Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp was liberated.

UNESCO: UN International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2013

It is on this date that the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated.

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Last February I led a historic visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp with more than 150 political and religious leaders, mostly from Arab and Muslim countries.

UNESCO: EDUCATION

Mr. Venezia was one of the few survivors of the Sonderkommando, or special units, in charge of emptying the gas chambers and burning the corpses during the Holocaust at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

UNESCO: MEDIA SERVICES

Speakers scheduled for this event include Henri Borlant, a physician who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, as well as Yehuda Bauer and Irina Bokova.

UNESCO: Social and Human Sciences

Auschwitz-Birkenau, set up by the Germans in Nazi-occupied Poland, is largely intact and is now a museum.

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