The German Chancellor opened the biggest exhibition of Holocaust art outside Israel in Berlin on Monday.

Art from the Holocaust, at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, features 100 works made by 50 Jewish artists during the Shoah; 24 of them were later murdered by the Nazis.

“The millions of individual stories during the Shoah remain deeply rooted in our national conscience,” Mrs Merkel said at the opening.

The works come from the Yad Vashem art collection and will be on display until April 2016.

“This exhibition allows a rare encounter, especially in Berlin, between today’s viewer and the person who experienced the events of the Holocaust. Each work is a testimony to the Holocaust period and a statement of the human spirit that refuses to give in,” said Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Wednesday, also marked the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The former death camp last year had a record 1.72 million visitors.

Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, said: “The increasing number of visitors is mainly due to the fact that Auschwitz-Birkenau has become the most significant symbol of the Holocaust. It is the most preserved camp.

“People know that in order to understand the post-war period, they should first understand what happened here.”