BRZEZINKA, Poland (AP) -- When the Soviet army entered Auschwitz exactly 70 years ago, finding piles of corpses and prisoners close to death, a Russian soldier took a small and hungry 11-year-old girl into his arms and rocked her tenderly, tears coming to his eyes.
That girl, today 81-year-old Paula Lebovics, doesn't know who that soldier was, but she still feels enormous gratitude to him and the other Soviet soldiers who liberated the camp on Jan. 27, 1945.
To her, it is a shame that Russian President Vladimir Putin won't be among other European leaders Tuesday on the anniversary of the death camp's liberation, his absence coming amid a deep chill between Russia and the West over the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine.
"He should be there," said Lebovics, who traveled from her home in Encino, California, back to the land of her birth for the ceremonies. "They were our liberators."
A member of an association of Auschwitz concentration camp survivors walks through the infamous 'Arbeit Macht Frei' entrance gate after laying wreaths with other members at the execution wall at the former Auschwitz I concentration camp on January 27, 2015 in Oswiecim, Poland. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Another survivor, Eva Mozes Kor, said she will not miss Putin, "but I do believe that from a moral and historical perspective he should be here." Kor compared Putin to Adolf Hitler, "grabbing land here and grabbing land there to see what he can get away with."
Among the leaders to attend are the presidents of Germany and Austria, the perpetrator nations that have spent decades atoning for their sins, as well as French President Francois Hollande and others. The U.S. is sending a delegation led by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
The participants will gather under an enormous tent covering the gate and railroad tracks of Birkenau, a part of the vast Auschwitz-Birkenau complex where Jews, Gypsies and others were transported by train and murdered in gas chambers. It is located in the Polish village of Brzezinka, which during the war belonged to a large section of Poland that was under German occupation.
Before going to Poland for the ceremonies, German President Joachim Gauck told the Parliament in Berlin that the lessons of the crimes of Auschwitz were "woven into the texture of our national identity."
From the "guilt and shame and remorse" of the Nazi genocide, modern Germany has emerged to become a champion of human rights and equality, he said.