Holocaust Remembrance Day Begins In Israel (PHOTOS)
JERUSALEM -- Israel dedicated its annual memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust to mark 70 years to the Warsaw ghetto uprising, a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis in World War II that resonates deeply in Israel to this day.
At the opening ceremony at nightfall, President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both linked the desperate Jewish revolt of 1943 to the warrior mentality that enabled the establishment of Israel five years later.
"There was a never a rebellion like it. They were so few and their bravery remained as a model for so many," Peres said at Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial, before hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families, Israeli leaders, diplomats and others.
"A clear line exists between the resistance in the ghettos, in the camps and in the forests and the rebirth and bravery of the state of Israel. It is a line of dignity, of renewed independence, of mutual responsibility, of exalting God's name," he said, "as a ray of hope which was not extinguished even during terrible anguish. The ghetto fighters sought life even when circumstance screamed despair."
Netanyahu called the uprising marked "a turning point in the fate of the Jewish people" where they transformed from helpless victims into fearless warriors.
Six million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators in the Holocaust, a third of world Jewry.