At midday on 25 January 2005, a commemoration ceremony involving Mr Szewach Weiss, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council and former Speaker of the Knesset, and Mr Jean Samuel, an Auschwitz survivor, was held to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The President of the Parliamentary Assembly, René van der Linden, gave a speech in the Parliamentary Assembly chamber before observing a minute of silence. On the forecourt, the Secretary General Terry Davis made a statement and then, Szewach Weiss and Jean Samuel unveiled a memorial stone. During the ceremony, the flags of the member States in front of Council of Europe headquarters were flown at half-mast.

In connection with the commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps, two exhibitions sponsored by the representations of Russia and Israel were inaugurated in the presence of the Secretary General and the President of the Parliamentary Assembly. Tommy Lapid, a former Israeli Minister of Justice, performed the opening ceremony and told his audience that one thing they could still learn was that remaining silent about the horror of anti-Semitic and racist acts possibly posed a greater danger than the acts themselves.