AUSCHWITZ, Poland (AFP) - Israel´s President Moshe Katsav deplored the world´s silence as the Nazis murdered millions of European Jews, in a speech at Auschwitz commemorating the liberation of the death factory 60 years ago.

Katsav called the death camp "the largest graveyard of the Jewish people" as he spoke to thousands of guests from at least 44 countries in the bitter cold at Auschwitz-Birkenau, drawing parallels with rising attacks and insults against Jews in modern Europe.

"Sixty years later, we face a re-emergence of anti-Semitism in Europe. Is it possible that the deterrent power of the Shoah weakened?

"The answer is in the hands of Europe´s leaders, it is in the hands of the educators and the historians," he stressed.

"The world knew about the destruction of the European Jewry, but remained silent," the Israeli president said in the swirling snow and bitter cold at Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million Jews lost their lives.

"Day and night and with unfailing precision, the Germans conducted a genocide industry, a killing factory for the murder of our people in Europe," he said.

"On this day, on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau, we feel closer than ever to the victims and the survivors. On this day we draw closer to our human heritage, to mankind´s morality, to the divine command."

Katsav warned of the emergence of new and dangerous doctrines in the 21st century, "false doctrines which are based on ignorance, brainwashing, incitement, hatred, blindness, deceit and falsification, on coercion and on base instinct, on totalitarianism, on the exploitation of democracy to achieve dictatorship, on terrorism and bloodshed, on crematoria and fire, on murderous fanaticism.

"The world leadership is responsible for the fate of humanity," he concluded. (Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. 01/27/05)