KRAKOW, Poland - Vice President Cheney told a gathering of Auschwitz survivors yesterday that their presence proved "that evil did not have the final say."

"Today, many Holocaust survivors have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren," Cheney said. "That, I believe, is the greatest victory of all. You survived terror. You have let the world know the truth and you have preserved the memory of those who perished."

Cheney was among the world leaders and Holocaust survivors who gathered in Poland yesterday to prepare to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

This year´s commemoration is especially significant because so many ofthe elderly survivors might not be alive for the next major anniversary, said Rabbi Israel Singer, a New Yorker who is chairman of the World Jewish Congress.

"People realize this is a late date in the age of the survivors," said Singer. He said it was crucial to rebut Holocaust deniers through the testimonies of those who lived through the nightmare of concentration camps.

"We need to reestablish the fact of the veracity of the Holocaust with the authoritative witness given by people who are still alive," he said.

Auschwitz, where 1.5 million prisoners died - about a million of them Jews - was liberated by Soviet forces on Jan. 27, 1945.

"We can give living testimony ... to let the world know, to try to get them to learn even though they don´t, so that it doesn´t happen again," said Trudy Spira, 72, of Venezuela.

She was sent to Auschwitz with her family as an 11-year-old from Slovakia in 1944.

Romanian-born Auschwitz survivor Olly Ritterband of Copenhagen said she came for her father, who died at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

"For more than 30 years, I couldn´t speak about the Holocaust," said Ritterband, 80, who lost 70 relatives in the Holocaust. "This is the Kaddish for my father," she said, referring to the Jewish prayer for the dead. (© 2005 Daily News, L.P. 01/27/05)