A key stage of this August’s Tour of Poland is set to start from the site of Nazi German concentration camp Auschwitz to pay respect to the victims of the Holocaust, organizers have announced.

The sixth stage from Oswiecim to Bukowina on this summer’s race, which takes place from August 1-7, will start near the site of the World War II-era death camp, where there will be a minute’s silence by the riders.

The 240km-long stage will be one of the race’s most challenging rides with the finish taking place on a climb.

“We think it’s important on our part to commemorate the Shoah,” the tour’s director Czeslaw Lang is quoted as saying.

“The spirit is that of remembering in order to better learn from the mistakes of our past, so that tragedies like these on this scale can never happen again.”

Auschwitz – the German name for Oswiecim in southern Poland – was the largest camp built by the occupying Nazis.

A million of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust were murdered there, mostly in its notorious gas chambers, as well as tens of thousands including Poles, Roma and Soviet POWs.

On 27 January 1945, the camp was liberated by Soviet troops and the 65th anniversary was marked at the site Thursday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Poland’s leaders.