An Auschwitz survivor yesterday brought the German parliament to its feet when he described his trip through "hell" in the last months of the second world war, and of a vain uprising by camp prisoners in October 1944.

Speaking in the Bundestag, Arno Lustiger told of the spontaneous uprising of Auschwitz prisoners in response to mass gassings of Jews. "The prisoners attacked the SS with axes and rocks and set one crematorium on fire," said Mr Lustiger, a Jew and Holocaust historian. "The SS mobilised, rounded everyone up in groups and killed them all with shots to the neck."

In Moscow elderly Holocaust survivors and Jewish leaders gathered with Red Army veterans and lamented the rise of anti-Semitism in today´s Russia. "There are only few Auschwitz survivors still alive today - most of them didn´t live to hear our lawmakers asking to ban all Jewish organisations," said Aron Zusman, head of a union of Jewish prisoners of Nazi camps.

In Thessaloniki, Holocaust survivors from Greek Jewish communities congregated in the city where 96% of its Jewish community was wiped out. "We must honour the Holocaust and not grow complacent because some people continue to question whether it took place," said David Saltiel, head of Thessaloniki´s Jewish community. (Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 01/28/05)