Dozens of elderly Holocaust survivors have lit candles at Auschwitz exactly 71 years after the Soviet army liberated the death camp which has become the most powerful symbol of the human suffering inflicted by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Events at the former death camp in southern Poland came as world leaders and others across the world marked the UN-designated International Holocaust Memorial Day

The events come amid warnings of a resurgence of anti-Semitism casting a shadow over a new generation of European Jews, driving some to leave the continent.

Federica Mogherini, the European Union's top foreign affairs representative, said in a statement: "We must be honest enough to admit that more than 70 years after the Shoah, anti-Semitism is still alive in our 'civilised' European Union."