Britain's Channel 4 television station is this year marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a documentary offering a unique look at the experiences of the Nazi death camp's inmates and victims.
The two-part film, "Auschwitz Untold," includes interviews from 16 survivors of the camp in Poland, both Jewish and Romany.
"These survivors in their 80s and 90s provide first-hand accounts in the dark shadow of Auschwitz and the Final Solution," Channel 4 said, referring to the Nazi plan to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
Six millions Jews, two-thirds of the pre-WWII European Jewish population, were murdered in the Holocaust.
“The 16 survivors who feature in this series tell their extraordinary accounts of survival and resistance against all odds in their own voices," says Sheldon Lazarus, senior development executive at Fulwell73, the production company behind documentary.
The interviews, Lazarus says, are accompanied by contemporaneous footage of Nazi concentration and death camps that has been colorized.
Channel 4 says the aim is to "bring a contemporary resonance to the unprecedented horrors of the not so distant past."
A similar process was used in director Peter Jackson's recent acclaimed film "They Shall Not Grow Old," which applied color to archive footage from World War I.
Lazarus says the producers of the documentary on Auschwitz, "hope this series will help remove a barrier that separates contemporary audiences from the reality of the Holocaust so that we never ever forget the atrocities of the past.”
The documentary is produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker David Shulman, whose previous work includes features on Andy Warhol, Martin Scorsese and the American civil rights movement.
The global memorial event is held annually on January 27 - the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, which this year marks its 75th anniversary.
To mark the occasion this year, dozens of world leaders will attend a special World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem under the "Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Antisemitism."
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Colorized footage from Auschwitz death camp
(Photo: The Guardian/Serge Klarsfeld/Lily Jacob-Zelmanovic Meier)
Announcing the event late last year, President Reuven Rivlin said that some 30 heads of state will attend the forum at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Prince Charles and the presidents of Germany, Italy and Austria are among those who have already confirmed their participation.
Rivlin called it a "one of a kind" gathering devoted to the threat of anti-Semitism and passing Holocaust remembrance to "generations who will live in a world without survivors."
The conference comes amid a spike in anti-Semitic incidents around the world, including the repeated desecration of Jewish cemeteries and physical attacks on Jews identifiable by their garb.