Nearly a third of them come from Israel, which adds additional importance to the whole event in view of the recent murder of four Jews at a kosher store in Paris.
Memories of Auschwitz-Birkenau forever scarred survivors and those who liberated the Nazi death camp.
An estimated 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were killed at Auschwitz during WW2 making the extermination camp the world’s biggest Jewish cemetery.
During Tuesday’s memorial survivors will lay wreaths and light candles at the so-called Death Wall at Block 11 to mark 70 years since the camp's liberation, and pay homage to those who never left its gates alive.
Russia will take part in the memorial ceremony with President Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, expected to attend.
Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski will offer his greetings, and there will be speeches by three survivors and closing remarks by WJC president Ronald Lauder.
