The 74-year old, who has served as a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) since 2000, had been invited by several Dutch Holocaust organizations to deliver the annual Auschwitz Never Again lecture.

The lecture is traditionally held on the anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation on January 27, 1944.

Buergenthal, who is Jewish himself, was deported to Auschwitz- Birkenau as a 10-year-old boy from his native Czechoslovakia. After the war, he lived in Germany. In 1951 he emigrated to the United States.

"Germany has admitted its responsibility and apologized for the terrible crimes it committed in the past," Buergenthal said in a prepared statement. "It has done so unlike some other countries that to this day have failed to ask for forgiveness for the crimes committed in their names."

Germany's efforts to atone for past crimes "must serve as an example to other nations," he added.

"There can be no reconciliation without the good faith effort to atone for past crimes. And there can be no end to hatred among nations and peoples without reconciliation and forgiveness."

Buergenthal also emphasized it would be too easy to put all responsibility for the Nazi crimes solely on its leadership.

"That would exonerate many millions of ordinary Germans ... from the responsibility they must bear," he said.

Commemorating the Holocaust means not being indifferent to the suffering of other human beings regardless their race, religion, nationality or sex, Buergenthal said.

Rather, he said, it means "to commit ourselves to preventing other genocides wherever in the world they might occur."

At the Auschwitz memorial the ICJ judge also received the Annetje Fels Kupferschmidt Award for his lifelong work for international human rights.

The Hague-based ICJ, the highest United Nations court, seeks to resolve matters of international law disputed by state governments.

The main Holocaust Memorial in the Netherlands was held on Sunday, also in Amsterdam. It was attended by almost 2,000 people, including a handful of representatives of Muslim organizations. (dpa)