Thousands march at Auschwitz to honour victims

Now a memorial and museum run by the Polish state, the site is symbolic of Nazi Germany's genocide of European Jews. Survivor Feiga Francis Schmidt Libman, 81, told AFP she lost her grandmother, aunt and cousins at Auschwitz. The doleful sound of the "shofar" -- a traditional Jewish ram's horn symbolic of freedom -- marked the start of the march in brilliant sunshine in the southern Polish town of Oswiecim, where Nazi Germany built the death camp in 1940.