OSWIECIM, Poland (CP) - Led by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, thousands of Jews from around the world remembered the victims of the Holocaust on Thursday in emotional but defiant ceremonies and a march at the site of the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The sun broke through the clouds for the closing ceremony of the March of the Living, a demonstrative walk of three kilometres from Auschwitz to the twin Birkenau camp. Some 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, were killed at the complex in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The march, in honour of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, contained an element of pride and defiance.

In the Nazi death marches of the last days of the Second World War, German soldiers and their collaborators herded skeletal, tortured, barely alive inmates along wintry roads ahead of advancing Allied forces.

But on Thursday, many marchers carried Israeli flags and wore jackets with Israel's blue-white colours, bearing witness to the failure of the Nazi goal of wiping out the Jews of Europe.

Among them were more than 1,000 Canadians, including 30 to 40 Holocaust survivors, many travelling with their families, said Sheila Kornhauser of UIA Federations Canada, the collective representative of the Jewish Federation and regional Jewish communities across Canada.

"This year (the march is) symbolizing the passing on of the memories from one generation to another," she explained.

In the past, the march has been an annual educational experience, with the participants mainly students.

"But this year for the 60th anniversary they've opened it up to other groups," such as municipal and provincial politicians, as well as teachers from public and Catholic school boards, Kornhauser said Thursday from Toronto.

"There are also teachers from native schools. There's also busloads of university and high-school students. There were supposed to be some federal politicians, but they had to cancel out at the last minute," she said.

Federal politicians withdrew their delegations earlier this week from various celebrations marking the anniversary of the end of the Second World War amid fears of a snap confidence vote in a volatile House of Commons. Later, Prime Minister Paul Martin won agreement from all three opposition leaders to put politics aside and attend an overseas event Monday marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands.

Tears flowed freely as about 20,000 gathered before the Birkenau camp to hear survivors tell of their horrific experiences, their words and pictures relayed on a huge screen set up in front of the cold, grey slate roofs of the preserved concentration camp buildings.

The screen displayed images of the camp's gas chambers and crematoriums, of emaciated prisoners and a large banner reading "Never Again."

"There are so many people from around the world here, it is a guarantee this will not happen again," said Jenya Sonts, a Russian student. "We have all survived the Holocaust."

Speakers noted that 60 years after the war's end, the numbers of survivors were dwindling. They called on succeeding generations to keep the memory alive.

Sharon's speech at the closing ceremony was tinged with anger, as he addressed the grandchildren of survivors he brought with him - many of them in Israeli army uniforms.

"Remember the victims and remember the murderers. Remember how millions of Jews were led to their deaths and the world remained silent," Sharon said. "The world stood aside then in silence. Remember. You are free Jewish youth."

He grieved for the millions who perished and lauded the survivors who came to Israel as it was being formed from the ashes of the Holocaust, fought in the war that followed its creation and raised families.

"You are heroes," he said. But he added that from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the creation of Israel in 1948, Britain tried to keep them out, sending thousands of Holocaust survivors to detention camps "behind barbed wire again" because of "Arab pressure of the time."

Sharon also touched on Israeli politics, saying that opponents to his Gaza withdrawal plan who use Holocaust images as part of their resistance are making a "grave mistake." Some opponents have compared the planned evacuations of thousands of Jewish settlers from their homes to Nazi deportations.

Upon arrival Thursday at Birkenau, which like Auschwitz is preserved as a museum, the camp survivors who accompanied Sharon surveyed the dingy barracks, then slogged slowly through thick mud and wet grass with their grandchildren.

Yitzhak Pery, 75, who spent eight months in Auschwitz, said it was his first time back.

"I was here 61 years ago and I am remembering everything," said Pery, who was accompanied by his 20-year-old grandson Shahar, an Israeli paratrooper. "I never wanted to come back. I came because of my grandson."

Many participants, including Sharon, toured the barracks - the long, cramped structures where hundreds of people were forced to sleep on wooden slabs. Pery later went into one of the barracks, and came out looking shaken.

The memorial ceremony was held at a nearby ramp, where the notorious Auschwitz camp doctor Joseph Mengele would survey people who arrived on trains and decide who would die immediately and who would be sent to labour camps. Marchers passed under the infamous sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" - "work makes you free."

The march coincided with the annual Holocaust memorial day in Israel. At 10 a.m., air raid sirens wailed throughout Israel for two minutes as people stopped whatever they were doing and stood in silence, and traffic came to a standstill.