Countries in Europe held various ceremonies Tuesday to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp and Poland has decided to build a Jewish history museum in Warsaw's razed Jewish quarter.

In Berlin, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told a gathering attended by Auschwitz survivors that his countrymen have a specialduty to keep the memory alive.

He said, "The overwhelming majority of Germans living today bear no guilt for the Holocaust. But they bear a special responsibility."

The leader expressed his shame for the Nazi Holocaust and vowedto fight anti-Semitism. "I evince my shame in view of those who were murdered and before those of you who survived the hell of theconcentration camps," he said.

Schroeder admitted that threats of anti-Semitism remained in Germany and called on all democrats to fight against neo-Nazis. "It cannot be denied that there is still anti-Semitism. Combating it is the task of the whole society," he said.

In Paris, French President Jacques Chirac called for France's vigilance and determination to fight anti-Semitism, which he said "has no place in France".

"I want to say again that anti-Semitism has no place in France.Anti-Semitism is not a point of view. It is a perversion, a perversion that kills. It is a hatred whose roots go to the very depths of evil. No resurgence can be tolerated," he said while inaugurating a memorial.

In his address to dignitaries and survivors, the president pledged French support for Israel -- a country whose existence, hesaid, was justified by the suffering of Jews in World War II.

In the Netherlands, a special reading marathon in going on in memory of the dead during those years. During the event, the namesand ages of all the 102,000 Dutch Jews who died in the German concentration camp during World War Two will be read aloud, the Dutch News Agency reported Monday.

The reading, organized by the Dutch Auschwitz Committee and theCamp Westerbork Remembrance Center, will continue for 112 hours uninterrupted until Thursday (Jan. 27), the date Auschwitz was liberated in 1945.

The Nazis wiped off six million of Europe's 11 million Jews during World War Two and half of the victims were Polish. To memorize the Holocaust, Poland has decided to build a museum commemorating 800 years of Polish Jewry in Warsaw's former Jewish quarter.

Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczynski said, "It is the duty of our generation to bear witness to eight centuries of Jewish presence in Poland."

To urge global efforts against a repetition of such holocaust, the UN General Assembly held a special session Monday, the first of its kind by the world body to mark the end of the Nazi death camp.

"The United Nations must never forget that it was created as a response to the evil of Nazism, or that the horror of the Holocaust helped to shape its mission," said Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Source: Xinhua