WATCH: Auschwitz marks 80th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation

The 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops is being marked at the site of the former death camp, in a ceremony that is widely being treated as the last major observance that any notable number of survivors will be able to attend.

Among those who traveled to the site is 86-year-old Tova Friedman, who was 6 when she was among the 7,000 people liberated on Jan. 27, 1945. She believes it will be the last gathering of survivors at Auschwitz and says she came from her home in New Jersey to add her voice to those warning about rising hatred and antisemitism.

“The world has become toxic,” she tells The Associated Press a day before the observances in nearby Krakow. “I realize that we’re in a crisis again, that there is so much hatred around, so much distrust, that if we don’t stop, it may get worse and worse. There may be another terrible destruction.”

Nazi German forces murdered some 1.1 million people at the site in southern Poland, which was under German occupation during World War II. Most of the victims were Jews killed on an industrial scale in gas chambers, but also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, gay people and others who were targeted for elimination in the Nazi racial ideology.

Elderly camp survivors, some wearing blue-and-white striped scarves that recall their prison uniforms, walk together to the Death Wall, where prisoners were executed.