UNESCO has officially renamed the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to make clear it was established and run by occupying German Nazi forces, a World Heritage Committee spokesman said Thursday.

The camp will now be known as "Auschwitz-Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)," said Roni Amelan, a spokesman for UNESCO's World Heritage Committee.

The committee agreed to change the name from "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" at a meeting in New Zealand following a request from Poland, and the change is effective immediately, Amelan said.

Auschwitz, where the Nazis killed more than 1 million people, has become a symbol of the Holocaust. Birkenau was the neighboring camp and the site of the main gas chambers and crematoriums.