1.5 million visit Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2014

Record number of visitors, mainly from US and Europe, come to Nazi concentration camp in Poland

By AP 4 January 2015, 5:26 pm

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The Israeli delegation, led by Rabbi Meir Lau and chief justice of the Supreme Court Asher Gronis, walk through the entrance of Auschwitz death camp in Poland, as they participate in the March of the Living on April 28, 2014. (photo credit: Yossi Zeliger/FLASH90)

WARSAW, Poland — Officials say a record number of more than 1.5 million people from around the world visited the grounds of the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2014.

The Auschwitz museum said Sunday on its website most visitors came from within Poland, with large numbers of tourists also coming from Britain, the US, Italy and Germany. The website didn’t say what the previous record was.

Between 1940 and 1945, about 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, but also Poles, Roma and other nationals, were killed in gas chambers or died from forced labor, hunger and disease in the camp operated by Nazi Germans.

On January 27, ceremonies attended by survivors will mark the 70th anniversary of its liberation by the Soviet army.