Survivors and leaders mark Holocaust Memorial Day

World leaders and survivors are marking Holocaust Memorial Day with remembrance services and events.

It honours the six million Jewish people murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution of other groups.

The day also marks the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, in what was then-Nazi-occupied Poland.

Set up in 1940, Auschwitz was initially intended to house Polish political prisoners - but it eventually became the largest of the Nazis' extermination camps, where Adolf Hitler's plan to kill all Jewish people - the "Final Solution" - was put in to practice.

About 1.1 million people were murdered there, mostly Jewish.

Here are some of the memorial events that took place during this year's Holocaust Memorial Day.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (above, centre), the Speaker of Israel's Knesset parliament, Mickey Levy, (left) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (right) laid wreaths at the concrete steles of Berlin's Holocaust Memorial.

Flags of the European Union, Israel and Germany were flown at half-mast in Berlin.

President of the lower house of the German parliament Baerbel Bas addressed a memorial ceremony at the Bundestag, in Berlin (below).

Mr Levi also spoke at the Bundestag.

In Brussels, survivor Margot Friedlander (below, left) sat next to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola to address a special plenary session.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex (centre) visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, now a museum, in Oswiecim, near the city of Krakow.

He joined survivors in placing candles at the "death wall", where Nazi SS soldiers shot and killed several thousands.

In Austria, Chancellor Karl Nehammer (below, left) and Israel's Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid, (right) attended a commemoration ceremony at the Mauthausen Memorial, the site of a Nazi concentration camp.

Mr Lapid also visited the Shoah Wall of Names memorial, in Vienna's Ostarrichi Park (below).

In Belgrade, members of the Serbian army's Honor Guard joined a memorial service at the monument for victims of the Nazi concentration camp Sajmiste.

Events were also held earlier in the week.

In York Minster's Chapter House, 600 candles were laid out in the shape of the Star of David.

Landmarks were lit up in purple in commemoration, including the Penshaw Monument near Sunderland in north-east England.

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