The commemoration pooled numerous representatives of royal families and heads of state and government, including Croatian President Stjepan Mesic who was at the helm of a delegation which also consisted of Foreign Minister Miomir Zuzul, former Auschwitz inmate Oto Kronsein, and Slavko Goldstein of the Jasenovac Memorial Centre.
The delegations, which included 19 presidents, paid tribute to 1.5 million victims of the infamous camp, and all speakers held speeches in their mother tongue.
The arrival of the new Ukrainian President, Viktor Yuschenko, whose father was imprisoned in the camp and who survived, and of Pope John Paul II's special envoy, Cardinal Jean-Maria Lustiger, who is of Jewish origin and whose mother died in the camp, was particularly emotionally charged.
Survived inmates related the horrors which they experienced in this death camp. Among the speakers were Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel and Anatoly Shapiro, the commander of Russian troops that liberated Auschwitz on 27 January 1945.
The survivors and members of the forces that liberated the camp signed a document requesting the establishment of an international centre for education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.
From 1940, when the camp was set up, to 27 January 1945, when surviving inmates were liberated, over 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In 1979 Auschwitz was added to the World Heritage list. The memorial centre is located at the site of the former camp and it is visited by several hundred thousand people every year.