Survivor Pierette Pierrot, 88, a French resistance fighter captured in 1944, came with her son to the ceremonies.

BBC: NEWS | Europe | Survivors mark camps' liberation

Xanana Gusmao, a former resistance fighter and figurehead of the country's independence movement, is certain to defeat Francisco do Amaral, his only rival.

ECONOMIST: Asia's imminent addition elects its president

One of the letters was by Libertas Schulze-Boysen, a German-born resistance fighter who was once a member of the Nazi party, but left in 1937 and went on join the resistance and collect photographic evidence documenting National Socialist crimes of violence.

BBC: Victims of Nazi anatomists named

According to Mr Goldnadel, France's leftist press idealised the former Resistance fighter, a strong critic of Israeli policy, as a "secular saint".

BBC: Inspirational French writer Stephane Hessel dies at 95

Rousseff is a former Marxist guerrilla fighter, who joined the underground resistance against the Brazilian dictatorship in the late 1960s.

FORBES: Brazil Elects First Female President Dilma Rousseff