'I am here': Holocaust survivors mark Auschwitz liberation

Their faces lined by age and haunting memories, about 100 Holocaust survivors joined political leaders Thursday in Jerusalem to recall the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp 75 years ago.

While many of the dignitaries at the sombre ceremony were born after World War II, with no personal memories of Nazi Germany's industrial-scale murder of Jews, for 81-year-old Yona Amit, the event was deeply personal.

Just five years old when she and her family escaped Nazi-occupied Italy for Switzerland, she spoke of her remarkable survival, accompanied by her granddaughter at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre.

Amit said her family was forced to flee her home by horse and cart, spending much of the war in hiding.

"We couldn't travel as Jews, because they collected the Jews and they took them straight to Auschwitz," she told AFP.

The escape through the Alps was horrifying, she said: "It wasn't easy, it was the most terrible thing -- the Germans, with their Alsatian dogs looking for us."
"My shoes are in that big mound of shoes in Auschwitz...I am here."
"I think this is the most important message of this war. Not the horrible things that were done -- we all know about them -- but the simple people who helped."