Jerzy Wroblewski, the curator of Auschwitz, said the text on the new tablet, to be placed at the main monument at Birkenau, which housed the crematoria, will read:

"In memory of the countless victims of Nazi genocide from Poland and other countries of occupied Europe: Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war and others, who suffered and perished in the camp and in the gas chambers. The world kept silent.

O Earth, cover not up my blood

And let my cry never cease.

Additional tablets will be near the monument, with this inscription translated into 18 languages: "Let this place remain for eternity as a cry of despair, and a warning to humanity. About one and half million men, women, children and infants, mainly Jews from different countries of Europe, were murdered here. The world was silent. Auscwhitz-Birkenau, 1940-1945."

Mr. Wroblewski said the tablets were expected to be in place within the next several weeks.

The new tablets will replace one with the following inscription: "This is the place of martyrdom and death of four million victims murdered in the Nazi genocide, 1940-45."

It was previously thought that four million died at the camps. More recent research has revealed the figure to be closer to 1.5 million.

For Jews and Poles, Auschwitz has long been a source of antagonism, with each claiming it as a symbol of their own suffering under the Nazis during the war. More than three million non-Jewish Poles died during the war from starvation, disease, exhaustion or in Nazi death camps. More than six million Jews died.