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A wreath lies on the tracks leading to the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz ahead of the 60th anniversary ceremony of the camp's liberation.

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Survivors from all over the world - here one from Ukraine with a rabbi - attend the ceremony wearing their old numbered camp uniforms.

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Other survivors wore blue-and-white striped scarves - a stark reminder of their camp overalls.

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French President Jacques Chirac with former Auschwitz prisoner and former French Health Minister Simone Veil pass the entry of the camp ahead of the ceremony.

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Many world leaders were there - including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and wife Jolanda, and Israeli President Moshe Katsav.

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German President Horst Koehler, who remained silent in recognition of Germany's role as perpetrator of the Holocaust, places a candle at a monument for the camp victims.

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The ceremony ended with a moving display of rail tracks on fire symbolising the loss of life at the camp.

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Earlier Germany's Bundestag (the lower house of parliament) held its own commemoration in Berlin.

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In the UK, the Queen met Holocaust survivors - here Gabriel Ge Klein who shows his Star of David arm patch - during a reception at St James's Palace.

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In the Greek town of Thessaloniki, children from a Jewish school hold up their paintings, in front of a Holocaust memorial in the northern Greek port city.

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Students look at an original cattle-car used to transport Jews to concentration camps, at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem on the day of the anniversary.