BERLIN -- Germans held services around the country on Saturday to mark the annual Holocaust Memorial Day, while the country's Jewish community issued a stern warning about the danger of denying the crime in which some six million Jews were murdered.

Politicians led the way in the ceremonies at various Holocaust sites in marking the day set up to coincide with the January 27, 1945 liberation of the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.

In Berlin, the Greens party laid a wreath at the Pulitzbruecke memorial, with party leader Claudia Roth saying, 'we are responsible for battling right-wing extremism, anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner attitudes.'...

At the Buchenwald memorial site in the state of Thueringen, state premier Dieter Althaus in his speech called for stronger efforts against right-wing extremism and anti-foreigner sentiment. He said this was why there should be ongoing education about the Holocaust.

At the former concentration camp site Sachsenhausen outside of Berlin, Brandenburg state Premier Matthias Platzeck urged Germany's current soldiers to visit the memorial site.

He pointed out that during World War II, a number of Wehrmacht soldiers had been held there, tortured and murdered because they had 'followed their consciences and resisted the Nazis' murderous wars.'