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Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, commemorated on Sunday the 80th anniversary of the departure of the first train convoy for the Auschwitz camp.

They were lucky to even survive the brutal train ride, with 80 people crowded into a single wagon with only a small window and bucket of water. But any luck ended at the ramp in Auschwitz. Questions of life and death were decided in an instant: upon arrival, she was separated from her mother and sister, who - as she learnt later - were murdered in the gas chambers right next door to her.

The Hellenic Parliament honored the memory of the victims of the Holocaust ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday evening by displaying the slogan "We remember" on its facade with a photograph of prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp. January 27 marks the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Friday, the Goethe Institute (goethe.de) will be holding a special remembrance event comprising two screenings. The tribute starts at 6 p.m. with Christian Petzold's 2014 drama "Phoenix," about a woman who returns to her traitorous husband after surviving Auschwitz only to be exploited again, followed at 7.45 p.m.

Greece's new health minister, Thanos Plevris, on Wednesday afternoon issued an apology for past statements he made as the defense counsel for his father, whom critics in the country and abroad consider a Holocaust denier, and following a same-day critical announcement by the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS).

According to world media, witnesses said they saw smoke, and the German Civil Protection Agency was declared an "extreme danger" alert.

Prime Minister Ludovic Orban attended, on Monday, the 75th anniversary of liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

See also: 

Poland's Holocaust Commemorations Marred by Politics

Forgetting Auschwitz: The Chilling Return of Anti-Semitism

Croatia Commemorates Holocaust amid Divisions over WWII History

Leaders from countries around the world will participate in the event.

Prime Minister Boyko Borissov is on a working visit to Poland, where he will participate in the official ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the of liberation of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the cabinet's press service said.

Seventy-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, a dwindling number of elderly Holocaust survivors will gather at the former German Nazi death camp on Jan. 27 to honour its over 1.1 million mostly Jewish victims amid fresh concerns over anti-semitism.