Two days from now, January 27th, marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army.

Here is a brief chronology of the camp, and a moving virtual tour of the site can be found here. Commemorating the liberation of this place of horror seems like it would be a simple thing, but in today's world, nothing is ever simple.

For starters, some Muslims are feeling rather left out:

British Muslims will boycott a state ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz unless it also commemorates the "holocaust" of the Palestinian intifada.

The ultimatum was issued in a message to Home Secretary Charles Clarke from Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, which represents more than 400 Muslim organizations.

"We have expressed our unwillingness to attend the ceremony because it excludes ongoing genocide and human rights abuses around the world and in the occupied territories of Palestine," said Sacranie.

They do have a point. Although the scale of the killing in Israel cannot compare with that in Auschwitz and the other concentration camps, we also wish we could commemorate the end of the homicide bombings. Unfortunately, it is just not possible because they haven't stopped yet.

Meanwhile, over in Europe, they are still trying to hash out the verbiage on their resolution for the anniversary:

As World leaders prepare to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a behind-the-scenes wrangle over the exact wording of a European Parliament resolution on the issue shows how sensitive the matter remains in Europe.

On 19 January, the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament proposed a "resolution on remembrance of the Holocaust, anti-semitism and Racism", which stated, "the concentration and extermination camps built by the German Nazis are among the most shameful and painful pages of the history of our Continent".

The EPP resolution, co-signed by its German leader Hans-Gert Pöttering and Polish MEP Boguslaw Sonik, also states that the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was "built in May 1940 by the Germans".

But other political groups - Liberals, Greens and Socialists - proposed resolutions which did not mention the word German.

Furthermore, some proposals spoke of the "liberation of the Auschwitz Death Camp in Poland", from which some Poles, including Mr Sonik, have inferred some Polish involvement in the building of Auschwitz.

My prediction is that they will eventually resolve their differences and the resolution will state that "an anonymous group built a concentration camp named Auschwitz in an undisclosed location, and somehow a million Jews died there." That is the funny thing about words. You can twist them to say whatever you want, but it has absolutely no effect on the truth.

The truth is that 1.1 million individuals passed through the gates of Auschwitz (above) and Birkenau (below) and were quietly erased like chalk numbers on a blackboard.